Basudeb DasSarma

Who is Basudeb DasSarma?

Basudeb DasSarma was a chemist and faculty at the University College of Science and Technology of the University of Calcutta. He was among an early group of Indian scholars and professionals to emigrate to the US. He did groundbreaking research with John C. Bailar, Jr. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, won an American Chemical Society award in 1971 for his contributions to the understanding of coordination and stereo-chemistry of metal complexes, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1972. He was a professor of chemistry at West Virginia State College from 1966 to 1992, President of the West Virginia Academy of Science, 1981–82, and a community leader and spokesman on environmental issues in the Kanawha Valley around Charleston, West Virginia. His memoir was published in 2010 posthumously.