Paul Chanmugam was born in Jaffna, Ceylon, on 1 June 1900, the son of Anna Annama (née Paul) whose father was resident surgeon at the Friend in Need Hospital, Jaffna, and Joseph Kadir Gamer Chanmugam, Principal of Jaffna Central College, where he received his early medical training before entering King's College in London. He received an anatomy department scholarship which enabled him to achieve an MSc, and he was awarded a WHO scholarship to America before his appointment as WHO Professor in Mandalay. He held early appointments at Colombo General Hospital before becoming lecturer, and later Professor of Anatomy in Colombo. For ten years, 1949-1958, he was an examiner for the primary FRCS examination. He was elected chairman of the University Tamil Movement. Professor Chanmugam wrote papers on anthropometry of Singhalese and Ceylon Tamils, and also on the skeletal remains from Tirukettiswararn which were published in the *Ceylon journal of science* in 1949 and 1954. In 1949 he delivered a presidential address to the Ceylon Association for the Advancement of Science on the architecture of the brain and its function. He was a keen supporter of the Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club. When he died on 29 November 1987 he was survived by a daughter and a son who was Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Louisiana.