Ajay Kanti Poddar was a consultant surgeon in South Australia. He was born in Pabna, in what was then India, on 1 July 1932. His father, Krishna Mohan Poddar, was a manager of a jute company; his mother, Jnanada Sundari Poddar née Saha, was a housewife. He attended the Hindu School, Calcutta and then Presidency College, and studied medicine at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College, University of Calcutta. He qualified in 1955. He went to the UK, where among other posts he was a surgical registrar at St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, Sussex from 1960 to 1961. He gained the fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and of England in 1961. During his training in England he was influenced by Rowland Thornley in Bolton, W H Q Mills and Graham Jessop in Bournemouth, and D G Martin in Chichester. He returned to India, where he was a lecturer and a consultant surgeon at the Bankura Sammilani Medical College, West Bengal, from 1963 to 1966, and then at the R G Kar Medical College, Calcutta. He was an examiner in surgery at the University of Calcutta from 1966 to 1968. In 1969 he emigrated to Australia, where he was a senior surgical registrar at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia. From 1970 to 1986 he was an honorary surgeon at Port Augusta Hospital, South Australia. He then became a medical adviser for the Health Insurance Commission, Australia, the precursor to Medicare. Outside medicine he was interested in horticulture, farming and aviculture. He played tennis and cricket and enjoyed photography. In 1961 he married Trudi Keller, the only daughter of a Swiss builder and a nursing sister. They had a daughter, Anita, and a son, Dave. Ajay Kanti Poddar died on 2 December 2014 aged 82.