Born on 16 March 1896 first son of Satis Chandra Ray, school-teacher and later a lawyer, and his wife Sumati Bose a well known singer, he was educated at the Zilla School, Ranchi under Mr Tipping. He won a scholarship tenable in Bihar, and took his higher education under Father Thompson at St Columba's College, Hazaribagh. After graduating he entered the Calcutta Medical College, living with his uncle Nibaran Babu Chandra Ray, professor at the Scottish Churches College. He won the prize for anatomy and the gold medal for surgery, and qualified in 1923. He then came to England and worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital, taking the Fellowship in 1930. He made further study in Edinburgh, Berlin and Vienna. Returning to Calcutta he was appointed to the staff of Kar Medical College, Howrah General Hospital and Chittaranjan Hospital, and he became an additional surgeon at the Calcutta Medical College Hospital in 1936. He worked with Dr L M Banerji, Dr B C Roy, and Sir R N Chopra, director of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, and was for a period acting professor of clinical surgery in the Medical College. On the outbreak of war in 1939 he was appointed the first Indian to be Resident Medical Officer at the Post-Graduate Hospital, and lived in the Hospital till the end of the war. When the Japanese bombed Calcutta his work was particularly heavy. In 1946 his own house was looted and damaged during political riots. From then till 1950 he was surgeon to the Lake Hospital. Ray married in 1937 an English lady whom he had met in London eight years before. He suffered a slight stroke in 1950, and accepted a post as medical officer to the State Bank of India's city branches. He had a second severe stroke while at work on 21 April and died without recovering consciousness on 27 April 1959 aged 63. Premnihar Ray was a Brahman of strict religious and moral principles, with a gay and childlike character. Publication: Chronic epididymo-orchitis or fibrosis of the testicle, of filarial origin. *Brit J Surg* 1934, 22, 264.