Romiel Anthonis was the most celebrated Asian surgeon of his day, and a role model to generations of Sri Lankans. He was born in Bambalapitiya, a suburb of Colombo, on 21 January 1911, one of the 16 children of Polwatte Arachchige Michael Anthonis, a master-carpenter, and Hettiarachchige Engaltina Perera, the daughter of an ayurvedic physician. Although the ancestral home, Madangahawatte, had extensive lands, the family were not well off. His father had little English education, but was widely read in Sinhala and was himself a celebrated poet. Romiel had been taught his letters at the age of six, and a year later entered the Milagiriya Sinhala School, walking there barefoot each day with his elder brother and sister. His father persuaded Fr Nicholas Perera, the rector of St Joseph’s College South (later to become St Peter’s College), to admit them provided they improved their English. By the time he was seven, Romiel was winning prize after prize, a feat repeated a few years later at secondary school, where he became the senior prefect. At the Colombo Medical College he again became head of his class in every year and, when he qualified in 1936, it was with gold medals in pathology, forensic medicine and surgery, and the rare government diploma medal. He became a house surgeon to Sir Arthur Marcellus de Silva who, he said, treated him like a son. In 1939 he was awarded a new scholarship, but was unable to take it up because of the war and it was not until 1945 that he went to England to specialise in surgery, passing the primary and the final FRCS at the first attempt. He returned to Ceylon in 1947 as a consultant surgeon to the teaching hospital in Colombo, now the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, where he served until he retired in 1971. He had a very extensive experience and kept meticulous notes of each of his cases, carefully illustrated with his own drawings. Among his more celebrated patients was the Prime Minister S W R D Bandaranaike, who had been repeatedly shot by a visiting Buddhist monk. He had multiple abdominal injuries and the operation took many hours. The patient recovered sufficiently well to ask that his misguided assailant should not be ill-treated, but died the following day from what was presumed to be a massive pulmonary embolism. Anthonis continued to work long after his retirement from government service, was sought after by many distinguished patients and was the recipient of many honours including the title of ‘Deshamanya’, the highest national honour of Sri Lanka. He was chairman of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and chancellor of the University of Colombo in 1981, remaining in that office for another 22 years. The College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka awarded him the title of ‘Pride of the Medical Profession’ in 2005. The Government of Japan conferred on him the ‘Order of the Sacred Treasure’. He was head of the Police Reserve Medical Corps, and a founder director of Seylan Bank. He was much revered as a teacher, never sarcastic or humiliating, but always inspiring. He collected rare books and works of art, and was an expert on the Buddhist scriptures. In 1943 he married Lilian Constance Perera, who predeceased him. Their son, P Ravindralal Anthonis, is a photographer. He died on 17 December 2009, aged 98.