Essays of A Life time

Author – Carlo Fonseka

Publisher – Godage Publishers

First Edition 2016

ISBN 978-955-30-6655-8

368 Pages

Carlo Fonseka (b. 1933), Colombo University’s high-profile medical physiologist from 1962 to 1989, was thrust into the limelight in 1970-1971 by his controversial investigations into ritualistic fire-walking. Postulating a testable biophysical hypothesis for the traditional religious ritual of fire-walking, he publicly demonstrated experimentally that professed non-believers in divine intervention could profanely consume token amounts of pork and alcohol (taboo for religious fire-walking devotees) and walk barefoot across fire-beds, similar to those used for ritualistic fire-walks at Kataragama, without sustaining burns. The implication is that the immunity of fire-walkers from burns required no divine intervention. The experiments received worldwide publicity in the late 1980s when Sir Arthur C. Clarke collaborated with Carlo Fonseka in a programme on fire-walking in his popular television series Strange Powers.

During his doctoral research years at the University of Edinburgh (1964-1966), he carried out (collaboratively) experiments that demonstrated the pattern in which the pituitary gland secretes Growth Hormone. The published findings came to be cited in standard medical textbooks. A person of wide interests (philosophy, religion, medical ethics, music, cinema, literature, left-wing politics, and health economics), from 1988 to 1990 he was a Senior Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University in Helsinki, Finland. His book titled Towards a Peaceful Sri Lanka (1990) published by the United Nations University won the serious attention of the highest echelons of the political authority in Sri Lanka in the early 1990s. From 1991 to 1998 he was the Founder Dean and guiding light of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Kelaniya, which became one of the most productive medical schools in the country.

Briefly initiated into Sinhala music as a schoolboy at St Joseph’s College, Colombo, by Sunil Santha in 1948, he has composed popular songs (lyrics and melodies) as an avocation. One number “Raththaran Duwe” became a massive hit, and is regularly sung at weddings when the bride goes away. The compact four-line dirge sung by Nanda Malini he composed for the concluding scenes of Tissa Abeysekera’s award-wining film Viragaya (1987) earned critical acclaim for its poignancy and appositeness.

An accomplished public speaker, the televised speech he delivered in February 1988 at the spectacular funeral of Vijaya Kumaratunga, the assassinated film idol, charismatic politician and husband of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, is an item of local political folklore. The longest-serving member in the history of the country’s University Grants Commission until 2010, he has been nominated to several statutory boards, commissions and councils. In 2007 he was appointed Founder Chairman of the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol. In 2012 he was appointed President of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and still serves in that position.

A committed popularizer of science, a prolific writer of popular newspaper articles, a veteran radio broadcaster and an engaging television talk-show personality, Carlo Fonseka has been an ubiquitous presence in the educational, medical, scientific, cultural and political life of the country during the past few decades.

– The Publisher –

#EssaysOfALifeTime #CarloFonseka #EnglishBooks #OnlineBooks