Santosh Kumar Sen was born in Delhi on 21 October 1910. He was educated in Delhi and qualified in medicine from Lahore. Travelling to Vienna he enjoyed learning surgery at the feet of such continental surgical masters as Bohler, Lichtenburg and Kunz, and then in Berlin under Sauerbruch. Returning to India with the Edinburgh Fellowship he became in 1938 the first honorary consultant surgeon to the Irwin Hospital, New Delhi. Thereafter he rose to great eminence in national and international surgery. He contributed much to improvements in the surgical treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis and he pioneered cardiac surgery in India in 1948. For these contributions to surgery, to surgical literature and to postgraduate education he was elected FRCS in 1964 - being the first Indian so honoured. His distinction as a leader of surgery had also been recognised by being elected member of the Academy of Medical Services USSR in 1964 and later to the Fellowship of the Surgeons Association of the German Democratic Republic. He was awarded the Fellowship of the American Trudean Society for his work on modified thoracoplasty. In India in 1962 he received the award of Padma Bushan. Amongst many fellowships of medical and surgical societies in India and abroad, he was President of the Association of Surgeons of India in 1959, President of the Delhi Medical Association in 1952 and of the Thoracic Surgeons Association for three consecutive years. A founder member of the Delhi Surgical Society he was editor, and later chairman of the editorial board of the *Surgical journal of Delhi*. In 1958 he was made Honorary Professor of the new Maulana Azad Medical College in the development of which, from the Irwin Hospital, he had played a signal part for he had been honorary director of postgraduate studies there since 1952. He was a member of the court of the University of Delhi and of the medical faculty for many years. He was regarded as a great surgeon with an abiding affection for his fellow men. He married Dr Sita Sen, a gynaecologist who bore him two daughters and one son. His wife predeceased him and his son is practising in Delhi.