Madhukar Kulkarni was a consultant surgeon in Malaysia. He was born on 4 July 1931 in Nagpur, Maharastra, central India, the son of a general practitioner and the eldest of six children. His third sister also became a surgeon. He studied medicine at the University of Nagpur, where he qualified in 1955. He held house posts in general and plastic surgery, and then lectured in anaesthetics at the Robertson Medical School in Nagpur for 18 months. In 1958, he went to the UK, where he was a house surgeon at Hull Royal Infirmary for three months, transferring to Lewisham in London as a senior house officer in anaesthetics. After gaining his diploma in anaesthetics, he held senior house officer posts in casualty and genito-urinary surgery. From 1960 to 1963 he was a registrar in general surgery at the West Norfolk Hospital, King's Lynn. As a registrar in cardiothoracic surgery at Seaham Hall Hospital, Newcastle from 1963 to 1967 he was part of a pioneering team working towards Britain's first heart transplant. He also created a new design for a holder for the Starr-Edwards valve. In 1968, he was appointed as a senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, where he was part of the famous team which were developing heart transplantation. He applied to US and UK hospitals for a consultant position, but was eventually offered a post by the government of Sabah, one of the 13 states of Malaysia. He was appointed consultant surgeon at the Tawau General Hospital in 1970. After four years, he transferred to Kota Kinabalu, also in Sabah, to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as senior consultant surgeon. At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, he helped design the operating theatres and was instrumental in having the hospital registered with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh as a postgraduate training centre. He retired from government service in 1987 and opened a private clinic in Luyang. During the 1970's in Sabah he saved the life of a patient with a subdural haematoma using a 240-volt Black and Decker drill (cordless was yet to be invented) when the correct surgical appliance was unavailable. On another occasion, he directed an entire operation by telephone. He also designed a modified pin and plate for fractures of the arm when he discovered that poor workers without sick pay in the tropical logging industry were breaking their casts early to go back to work. He was instrumental in founding the Sabah Cancer Society and was involved in early research on HLA (human leukocyte antigen) and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) that is predominant in the local ethnic population of the state. It was hoped that those identified at increased risk could be monitored as NPC is usually detected late and has low survival rates. He was awarded an ADK (Member of the Order of Kinabalu) by the state government of after 17 years’ service to the people of Sabah. He was involved in the local Rotarians, and served as president. He was also supported several social projects. He married Dorothea Mary Harrod in 1963 and they had two sons and a daughter: Nicholas, Teresa and Christopher. This marriage was dissolved, and in 1988 he married Bridget Peters. Together with his nurse, Halinah Gontuk, he was brutally murdered in his clinic on 6 August 1999, at the age of 68. He was survived by his first and second wives, children, stepdaughters, Everista and Babitha, and stepson, Lawrence.