Brendon Gooneratne

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Brendon Gooneratne (born 28 March 1938) is a Sri Lankan scholar and physician.^[1] He has authored several books and publications.^{[citation needed]}

Educated at Royal College Colombo, Gooneratne gained his MBBS(Hons) from the University of Ceylon, Colombo and went on to gain a DAPE from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a PhD from the University of London. He was the first Sri Lankan Doctor to be awarded the Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research.^{[citation needed]}

During his school and university years, Gooneratne was a renowned cricketer, known as a great right arm fast bowler, and an excellent batsman.^{[citation needed]} In a legendary Royal-Thomian match, in 1954, he took 4 wickets for 15 runs and top scored in the match. In 1956, in Wesley College, Colombo, he took 8 wickets for 18 runs, in a match which was thereafter colloquially known as ‘Brendon Gooneratne’s Match’.^{[citation needed]}

Gooneratne was also a well-known athlete, specialising in the discus throw. At Colombo University, he captained the cricket team, and led it to great success. While touring India, Gooneratne took 6 wickets for 78 runs, the first time a Sri Lankan university won a match in a touring tournament.^{[citation needed]}

After practising as a physician in the Ceylon Medical Service, he joined the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1965 as a Senior Lecturer and in 1971 became the Head of the Department of Parasitology.^{[citation needed]}

In Australia, he was the President of Project Jonah, an organisation which actively raised awareness of the need to protect marine mammals, and which - under his leadership - successfully lobbied to ban whaling and establish the Indian Ocean as a whale sanctuary for all time.^{[citation needed]}

As a medical doctor, Gooneratne specialised in lymphology, radiology and tropical medicine. He edited and partly wrote a medical text book called ‘Lymphography, Clinical and Experimental’, published by Butterworths, England, in 1974.^{[citation needed]}

As a scholar of Ceylon history, Gooneratne has published several books in his fields of interest, including ‘From Governors’ Residence To President’s House’, ‘The Epic Struggle Of The Kingdom of Kandy’, ‘That Inscrutable Englishman, A Study Of John D’Oyly’, co-researched and co-written with his wife, Professor Yasmine Gooneratne; and co-edited the felicitation volume for Professor Yasmine Gooneratne, ‘And Gladly Teche’, which was published in 1999, by Argus Publications.^{[citation needed]}

Gooneratne’s personal memoirs, ‘The Good, The Bad And The Different’, were published by Argus Publications in 2016, containing anecdotes and remembrances of his life in Sri Lanka and Australia. The book is notable for its photographs and descriptions of vibrant personalities, and the author’s lively recollections of many travels around the world.^{[citation needed]}

Gooneratne has collected rare maps and antiquarian books of Sri Lanka over a lifetime. He has a lasting love of the natural landscape, wildlife and environment of Sri Lanka.^{[citation needed]}

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