Dr. V. Shanta

On March 11, 1927, in Mylapore, Chennai, Viswanathan Shanta was born into a family of extraordinary minds. Her grand uncle was Sir C. V. Raman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Her maternal uncle was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. Science ran through her blood, but the path she chose was her own.

In April 1955, she declined a prestigious government post as Assistant Surgeon at the Women and Children's Hospital and instead walked into the Cancer Institute (WIA) — a year-old institution occupying a small hut in Adyar with twelve beds and exactly two doctors. She worked without pay for the first year. She would not leave for sixty-six years.

She led India's first successful trials of combination cancer therapy in the 1960s. Under her leadership, the institute became the first in South India recognised as a Regional Cancer Centre by the Government of India in 1974. She founded the Madras Metropolitan Tumour Registry in 1981 and opened India's first hereditary cancer clinic in 2000.

She introduced chemotherapy and radiation therapy protocols tailored for Indian patients, pioneered cervical cancer screening in rural districts, and kept treatment free or subsidised for over 60% of patients throughout her tenure. Not a single case file has been lost since 1955, and patient follow-up exceeds ninety percent.

She received the Padma Shri (1986), Ramon Magsaysay Award (2005), Padma Bhushan (2006), and Padma Vibhushan (2016) — India's second-highest civilian honour. She died on January 19, 2021, at the age of ninety-three, having spent her last days dictating letters seeking donations for the institute she loved.