Rudra Rasaretnam was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Colombo General Hospital, Sri Lanka. His grandfather was Samuel Chellar Paul, a senior surgeon at Colombo General Hospital and his uncle, Milroy Paul, was the foundation professor of surgery at Colombo Medical College. Rasaretnam studied medicine in London and gained his MB BS and MRCS LRCP in 1957. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1962. He returned to what was then Ceylon in the early 1960s, where he worked with his uncle, Milroy Paul at Colombo General Hospital. He retired in 1997. Rudra Rasaretnam died on 7 August 2017.