Somasunderam Pothalingam was a surgeon at the Children's Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and at Wanstead Hospital, London, and an honorary assistant in surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London. He qualified MB BS in 1951 from the University of Colombo, in what was then Ceylon. He went on to gain his fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1964 and from the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1967. Somasunderam Pothalingam died on 6 October 2008. He was 81. He was survived by his wife, Margie, and sons Ketish and Natesh.