Animesh Chakravorty earned his BSc and MSc degrees from Calcutta University. He then worked with the distinguished chemical physicist Sadhan Basu as his doctoral guide and their work on polarized ligand field spectra performed with a home-built micro spectrophotometer yielded important new results such as tris-chelate trigonal splitting. After PhD (1961) he spent three years studying binding equilibria with FA Cotton at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and paramagnetic contact shifts with RH Holm at Harvard University, USA. From PhD days he was a constant pursuant of parallel independent work and two of his notable contributions pertain to charge transfer spectra of planar halo-complexes and shape-control of stereo-labile species using suitable host lattices. He was award DSc (hc) by Burdwan University, West Bengal.

Academic and Research Achievements: In 1964, Chakravorty joined the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur as lecturer, later becoming Professor and Head. In 1977, he moved to Kolkata to head the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science where he is now an Emeritus Professor. He has played a key role in building a tradition of high-class research and teaching in modern inorganic chemistry. His research has concerned design, structure and transformation of molecular transition metal species belonging to coordination, bioinorganic and organometallic types. A central theme has been variable valence as in chemical and electrochemical manipulations of tuned metal-ligand ensembles leading to novel species and unusual redox. The impact of this activity is widely felt in d-block chemistry spanning phenomena such as catalyzed water oxidation, electroprotic reactions, aromatic hydroxylation, oxo transfer, azo radicalization. Chakravorty has published over 300 original research papers and authored a number of book chapters, review articles and published popular articles. Fifty-eight students have received PhD degrees under his guidance.

Other Contributions: Chakravorty had been on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Inorganic Chimica Acta, Dalton Transactions (RSC), Inorganic Chemistry (ACS), Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry II, Vol. 1-10 (Elsevier), Indian Journal of Chemistry, etc. He was an elected Bureau Member of IUPAC, a Visiting Professor at Texas A&M University, an Honorary Professor and Hindustan Lever Research Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He was President of the Chemical Research Society of India and Member, INSA Council (1987-89).