Kavan Ratnatunga is a Sri Lankan scholar, with interests in astronomy, archaeology and numismatics.

Kavan Ratnatunga went to school at Royal College, Colombo, Ceylon.

In 1976 from the University of Ceylon, Colombo, he was awarded a first-class BSc Honours Degree in Physics.

Ratnatunga's career included research at Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria Canada, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt (1989/91), Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1992/96), and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1996/2004).

[4] His 50 publications in refereed Journals include the first in-situ sample of field halo K giants in the galactic halo (1983),[5] and the first quadruple gravitational lens discovered with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (1995).