James Randunna Corea was an orthopaedic surgeon. Born on 30 August 1941 in Ceylon, he was the eldest son of Don Henry Richard Atygalle Corea, a superintendant of police, and his wife Claire Maude née De Alwis. His father in law had been a Gate Mudaliyar, a distinguished colonial post, and his great grandfather John Athygalle was the first colonial surgeon in Ceylon. He was educated at St Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia where he became president of the senior science association and won a science prize. In 1962 he enrolled as one of the first batch of students at the Peradeniya Faculty of Medicine, Ceylon University and graduated MB BS in 1967. During house jobs at the Kandy Teaching Hospital he began to develop an interest in orthopaedics which may have sprung from the experience of breaking his hand when a teenager playing polo as he had then been much impressed by the orthopaedic surgeon’s skill. He travelled to the UK to work in Ipswich, Crawley and Darlington. At the latter hospital his mentor was Kenneth Charles McKeown. Passing the fellowship in 1975, he went on to gain a master’s in orthopaedics at Liverpool University in 1979 and the Edinburgh fellowship in 1980. He initially returned to Sri Lanka but failed to find a post at the appropriate level so instead moved to the King Faisel Hospital in Daaman, Saudi Arabia where he eventually became professor and head of the department of orthopaedics. Although remaining in Saudi Arabia he built up closer and closer links with his native country over the years. He wrote to President Ranasinghe Premadasa in the late 1980’s suggesting that a scoliosis ward was set up in the Sri Jawewardenepura Hospital as the condition was largely untreated at that time and young sufferers had to wear cumbersome leather braces. When the unit was opened in 1990 he performed the first corrective surgery on an 18 year old girl. From then on he was to perform some 175 such procedures during his regular but short return visits, the last one being in the February of the year in which he died. He also took on many other orthopaedic surgical procedures ranging from club foot in children to adult bone, joint and spinal surgery and referred to himself as the “orthopaedic dustbin”. Often he treated the patients for free if they were poor and was prepared to take on difficult cases whose care had been neglected or mismanaged. While in Colombo he also acted as a volunteer police surgeon and was a reserve senior superintendant of police possibly as a tribute to his late father. While he was an intern in Kandy he met Nalini Hope. She followed him to the UK and they were married in 1971. They had three children, twin daughters Ranmali and Namali and a son, Gemunu. He enjoyed riding and art and, in his later years, devoted his spare time to doing research into his family tree which is published on the web as the Edirimana Corea family tree. His premature death interrupted his project to print the family tree on fabric using sophisticated printing techniques. He died in Saudi Arabia on 1 April 2008 aged 66, survived by his wife and family.