K. N. Seneviratne Oration
I first met Keerthi Nissanka Seneviratne in 1974 when I entered the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo as an undergraduate where he was the Professor of Physiology. Sadly our last meeting was also at the same place. He was then serving the World Health Organisation and visited the Faculty while on home leave, I was a junior lecturer in his former Department and had returned to Sri Lanka a few months earlier after postgraduate training overseas. Until the sad truth of his death struck us in August 1986, I never realised that was to be my last meeting with him. From 1974 to 1986 I knew him as a superb teacher, dedicated researcher, a generous advisor, a mentor and above all as an extraordinarily nice human being. It is not easy to find human beings in whom scholarship, honesty, integrity, kindness and compassion are blended at their very best. Seneviratne was one such a person.

Seneviratne’s successor to the chair in Physiology at the University of Colombo, Prof. Carlo Fonseka writing in "The Island" on 21 November 1987 said, "This large-hearted giant of a man was spontaneously self-effacing, consciously non-competitive, disarmingly non-aggressive and pathologically publicity shy. So he was less well-known by the general public than his less-talented, low-achieving, lower-middle class underlings (like me) in the Department of Physiology of the Colombo Medical School. He was not concerned even about posthumous recognition. He knew what he wanted from life. He knew how to get it. He got it and was happy. Publicity — least of all newspaper publicity was not something he wanted".

K. N. Seneviratne affectionately known as "Bull" to his friends was born on 22 November 1929. Following a brilliant career at the Colombo Medical School and in Edinburgh where he received postgraduate education, Seneviratne made a name for himself in the International Scientific Community. Others would agree with me that none of us Physiologists working in Sri Lanka have yet been able to match his international recognition. His subspeciality was neurophysiology. In his time equipment and other facilities for research were sparse, research funds were meager, there were no computers to facilitate literature search, data analyses, graphics and writing, certainly one did not get points for promotion from research. Yet he possessed greatest gifts of all, a sharp analytical mind, an unquenchable thirst for new knowledge, a very strong motivation and extreme dedication. Sadly these very characteristics are lacking in most of today’s academics.

Seneviratne working in his small laboratory in a remote third world country produced answers to research problems in neurophysiology which were published in highly reputed international journals. When he was working with a diabetic rat model in order to understand why diabetic patients develop nerve damage, he himself came to the Department during the weekends to feed the animals without leaving this to a subordinate. Such was his extreme devotion to research. He also alleviated suffering of mankind by offering neurophysiological investigations and his expert opinion free of charge to patients who were referred to him.

K. N. Seneviratne was a superb teacher. He used audio-visual aids of nowadays only sparingly for undergraduate teaching. He was mostly a chalk and talk teacher. His lectures were lucid, he made complex phenomenon look simple and inspired the students. We had to wait long for his lectures as neurophysiology was taught towards the end of the second MBBS course, but some of us were luckier to have tutorials with him from the first term itself. More than 25 years ago he with his able staff introduced some of the new features that are being added to medical curricula world over now. Multiple choice questions, objective structured practical examinations (these were then known as spots), structured essay questions, staff seminars and student seminars were there in the Physiology curriculum even when I was an undergraduate. He was also a father figure to students and to some junior staff like me. He did not require a title of "Student Counsellor" to lend a sympathetic ear to a problem.

His other interest was health man power development. He started this in Colombo as the first Director of the Institute of Postgraduate Medicine (predecessor to present day Post Graduate Institute of Medicine) and continued in the region as an Advisor to Regional Director for South East Asia, World Health Organisation. We were very sad when he decided to leave the Department of Physiology to take up the offer from World Health Organisation in 1982 though this was to broaden his services to mankind. But from wherever we were, we could seek his advice and a prompt response was always assured. We lost him in 1986 when he was on a World Health Organisation Mission in Indonesia.

K. N. Seneviratne oration is an annual event in the calendar of the Physiological Society of Sri Lanka. This small society was founded a year after Seneviratne’s death. The inaugural K. N. Seneviratne oration was held in 1987. None other than his former PhD supervisor, Professor David Whitteridge, FRS from United Kingdom delivered the inaugural oration. Eminent scientists, medical educationists, health administrators and physicians from overseas and Sri Lanka delivered other orations. Most of them personally knew Seneviratne. Some were his former students. This year’s orator is none other than his successor to the Chair of Physiology at the University of Colombo, Prof. Carlo Fonseka who later became the first Professor of Physiology and first Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya.

Having retired from University service he now functions as the Secretary General, Sri Lanka National Commission for UNESCO. He will deliver the K. N. Seneviratne Oration on 15th of November 2001 at 6.30 p.m. at the Lionel Memorial Auditorium at No. 6, Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo 7. Best way we can honour K. N. Seneviratne is by following the example he set. It is not an easy task, his standards were far too high for lesser mortals like us to attempt.
KHT