Dr. Ida Belle Scudder was the niece of Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, the founder of the Christian Medical College, Vellore. Affectionately known as "Ida B," she embodied the same spirit of selfless service that defined her aunt — and it is to her that the Ida B Scudder Cancer Centre, the Department of Radiation Oncology at CMC Vellore, owes its very existence.

Ida B graduated as a doctor in 1928 in the USA with a calling towards paediatrics and had already begun her training in that field. However, CMC was in desperate need of trained doctors, and her aunt asked her to come to Vellore. Leaving her paediatric career behind, she arrived at CMC in 1931, where she taught Anatomy and ran the Eye, ENT, Medicine, and Obstetrics services in turn. In each field, she was distressed by the large numbers of cancer patients — particularly those with oral and cervical carcinomas — for whom surgery was the only available treatment, and that only for a few.

Her path into radiation oncology came not from ambition but from necessity. Her aunt had no one to run the ageing X-ray machine and asked Ida B to train as a radiologist. In her own words: "The last thing in the world I would have normally chosen was radiology" — yet she added, "I have never regretted doing so, as I really enjoyed it." She travelled to the USA and the UK to train in Radiology, Medical Physics, and Radiotherapy, returning to Vellore in 1939 to establish the joint Department of Radiology and Radiotherapy — which later gave rise to Radiodiagnosis, Radiotherapy, Nuclear Medicine, Hematology, Medical Oncology and Palliative care as independent departments.

Beyond clinical work, she built the educational and research foundations of these departments and always made time for the mobile "Roadside Clinics" in the countryside. Her successor, Dr. A. D. Singh, described her as the most compassionate doctor he had ever met. She retired from CMC in 1967, went on to establish radiology departments at Miraj and Ambillikai, and passed away on July 4, 1995, aged 95, in Tennessee, USA.

The Dr. Ida B. Scudder Oration is delivered at each Annual AROI Tamil Nadu & Puducherry State Conference to honour an oncologist who, by choosing service over personal ambition, became the true founder of radiation oncology in South India — and the inspiration behind the institution where many of us trained and work.

The oration is delivered at each Annual AROI Tamil Nadu & Puducherry State Conference by a distinguished radiation oncologist, keeping alive the spirit of a pioneer whose legacy is woven into the very fabric of the specialty we practice.