Balamurali Ambati
Balamurali Krishna "Bala" Ambati (born July 29, 1977) is an Indian-American eye doctor, teacher, and researcher. He became the world's youngest doctor in 1995 at age 17 years and 294 days.
He was born in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India, to a Telugu family. His family moved to Buffalo, New York when he was three, then to Orangeburg, South Carolina, and later Baltimore, Maryland. He showed exceptional talent early, doing calculus at age four and graduating high school at 11. He co-authored a book on HIV/AIDS at the same young age.
Ambati finished New York University at 13 and then earned his medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine at 17. He did an ophthalmology residency at Harvard University. He enjoyed strong success in science competitions and was recognized as a National Merit Scholar.
He completed a cornea and refractive surgery fellowship at Duke University in 2002, then joined the Medical College of Georgia. He also volunteers with the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital to teach eye surgery in underprivileged countries. In 2008, he earned a PhD in Cell Biology.
In 2011, Ambati donated a kidney to a 16-year-old boy from Idaho. He worked at the Moran Eye Center and the University of Utah from 2008 to 2016, and later practiced in Eugene, Oregon at the Pacific Clear Vision Institute. Since 2020 he has been Professor and Director of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Oregon’s Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.
Ambati’s father, Ambati Rao, was an industrial engineer and his mother a math teacher. He co-wrote the AIDS book with his brother Jayakrishna, who is also a doctor.
Awards include the Ludwig von Sallmann Clinician-Scientist Award (2014), the Troutman-Véronneau Prize (2013), and the Fourth IRDS Award for Medicine.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:13 (CET).