Don Abraham Ranasinghe was born on 26 December 1908 in Welangana, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He attended Ananda College and entered the medical school in Colombo in 1930. After qualifying with first class honours in 1936 he, specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology and became lecturer in the Colombo Medical School, in 1952. He was appointed Professor and eventually head of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology, retiring from the Chair in 1974. He was the Ceylon representative of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 1963 to 1974 and an invited examiner in London in 1969. He was President of the Sri Lanka College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and a member of the National Health Council and advisor on family planning, serving as Chairman of the latter's council for eighteen years. He was a proponent of vaginal hysterectomy and published a report on a thousand cases. He was twice married, first to Beatrice Samarasinghe, by whom he had three children, and secondly Anne Ranasinghe, a freelance writer and executive secretary of Amnesty International South Asia Publications Service. He had four children by his second wife, two of whom are medical. He was a prize winning tennis player, an expert rifle shot and an enthusiastic bridge player. Other interests were cricket and soccer. He retired in 1975, but was still Chancellor of the University of Colombo when he died on 31 March 1981.