Harry Annamunthodo was born on 26 April 1920 in British Guiana, now Guyana. He was proud to claim as an ancestor an Indian Sepoy transported after the Mutiny. He was educated at Queen's College, Georgetown, before entering the London Hospital Medical College in 1941, at that time evacuated to Cambridge. He was awarded prizes in anatomy, surgery, medicine and pathology before qualifying in 1946. After being house surgeon to Sir Henry Souttar he spent several years within the orbit of the London gaining surgical experience, passing his FRCS in 1951. It was always his ambition to pursue an academic career in the Caribbean and in 1953 he was appointed lecturer in the new surgical department of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. In 1961 he became a professor and head of the department. He was Hunterian Professor in 1960 and he spent a year as Rockefeller research fellow in cardiac surgery preparatory to establishing the new discipline in Jamaica. He was dedicated to making his department the ultimate referral centre for the area and to this end he gathered round him academic surgeons of like mind and travelled round the island establishing strong links in undergraduate and postgraduate training with the surgeons of Trinidad and Barbados. Communal violence marred his latter years in Jamaica and within the University he was increasingly frustrated by the deterioration in the high academic and moral standards that he had striven to maintain for so long. It was not wholly with regret that he resigned from the Chair in 1980 and spent his last years as a professor at the University of Kebangsaan in Kuala Lumpur. He retired to Florida with his wife, Margaret, whom he had married in 1954. Despite his honours he remained a simple but hospitable man, happy in his home life and interested in philately and the culture of mango trees. His wife, a son and three daughters survived his death on 6 September 1986.