Sadhan Basu completed his DSc in the year 1948 from the University of Calcutta. His areas of specialization were quantum chemistry and photochemistry. He held the position of Palit Professor Chemistry, University of Calcutta.

Academic and Research Achievements: Basu's work spanned the areas of charge transfer interactions, ligand field spectra, hydrogen bonding, quantum chemistry and photochemistry. He made significant contributions to polymer chemistry and to free radical polymerization. The method he developed for determining the —NH2 group in nylon is now the standard procedure in industry. He also established the role of the highest field molecular orbital in determining the charge transfer frequency and demonstrated the existence of the vibrational structure in charge transfer bands in solutions. Basu's work on excimer and exciplex emission attracted wide attention. The diversity of his research is reflected in the use of the Tomonaga gas model to calculate the transition energies and oscillator strengths of aromatic polyhydrocarbons, in the use of the graph theory to show that that only three -four- and six-membered rings could give extended catacondensed planar structures and in the Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov formulation to show that the longest wavelength singlet transitions in linear polyenes converge to a limit while the corresponding triplet transitions do not.

Other Contributions: Basu was Associate Editor, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, the Indian Journal of Chemistry and the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy (Part A). He also served as a member of the INSA Council (1982-84).

Awards and Honours: Sadhan Basu was awarded the SS Bhatnagar Prize (1965), the Acharya JC Ghosh Gold Medal (Indian Chemical Society) (1984) and the CV Raman Birth Centenary Commemoration Medal (1988). He was also the UGC National Lecturer (1972-73). Basu was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Indian Chemical Society and Societié de Chemie Physique' (France).