Remembering Dr. Prakash Shetty

Dr. Prakash Sarvotham Shetty, a distinguished CMC alumnus (batch of 1961) and former faculty member passed away on September 3, 2018. Dr. Shetty did his undergraduate and postgraduate training at Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore.  He then moved to St. John’s Medical College in Bangalore.  He received a Nehru Scholarship from the Indian Government to obtain a PhD on human thermogenesis at Dunn Clinical Nutrition Centre in Cambridge. He returned as Head of Physiology at St John’s Medical College. Dr. Shetty left St John’s to become the Chair in Human Nutrition at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and then joined the FAO as Service Chief of the Nutrition Planning, Assessment & Evaluation Service, Food and Nutrition Division.   Following this, he was a Professor of Public Health at Southampton University and then became CEO of the LANSA (Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia) consortium. Prakash was well-loved by his classmates, teachers and students at CMC.

 

Dr. Albert Johnson, Dr. Shetty’s class mate, Foundation Board member and President of the North American CMC Association said “One of the Brightest stars of 1961 has stopped its shine. The loss would be felt by the future generation of students. Its brightness will be felt in the kingdom of Heaven”.

 

Another class mate, Dr. Abraham Joseph, former Head of Community Health at CMC wrote “Prakash was one of the outstanding students of our class, was the recipient of several prizes throughout his student career and was greatly respected by his classmates. He had an inquisitive mind and at times his questions would embarrass the teacher who had no answer. This quest for knowledge was not just to pass examinations with distinction, but to really understand the functioning of the human body”.

 

Dr. P. Zachariah, former head of the Physiology Department at CMC and President Emeritus of the CMC alumuni association and Dr. Shetty’s teacher wrote; “I was delighted when Prakash sought to specialize in Physiology by joining the then fledgling MD program. He got his MD in 1972, and in doing so, gave a flying start to the postgraduate program in Physiology at CMC. Even at that point his keenness to teach, and teach very effectively, was obvious”.

 

Dr. Shiv Pillai, currently Professor of Medicine and Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School and a former student of Dr. Shetty’s wrote “we first connected with Prakash Shetty when we were second year medical students and he was a young faculty member in the Physiology department. He was an inspirational and accessible mentor, whose passion for science, for biomedical research and for life in general, was infectious. Apart from a deep intellectual interest in all things scientific, Prakash was a renaissance man – very knowledgeable about culture, literature, classical music, history and food.  One could learn from Prakash about the intricacies of brown adipose tissue and fat metabolism, discuss circadian rhythms and the biology of bats or perhaps receive an exposition on medicine in ancient India based on his remarkable photographic records of temple sculptures and murals. The latter were obtained from remote villages and hamlets across the country, all depicting disease and medicine as conceptualized by artists and artisans across the centuries”

 

From: Remembering Prakash Sarvotham Shetty MD, PhD, FRCP 28/09/1943 – 03/09/2018

Kurpad AV, Muller MJ, Weisell RC & Soares MJ. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2018

Oct 25, 2018 | Alumni, CMC News