Debashis Mukherjee obtained his PhD degree (1972) from the University of Calcutta, with specialization in theoretical chemistry and theoretical spectroscopy. He has been Reader (1974-84), and Professor (1985- ), Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata.

Academic and Research Achievements: Mukherjee has worked on molecular electronic structure and dynamics using many-body methodology and real-and imaginary-time quantum dynamics. His important contributions are: one of the earliest proponents of the multi-reference coupled cluster theory; introduced the concept of the Valence Universality in this context; the first proponent of the multi-reference many-body theories for general model spaces; first proponent of a rigorous state-specific spin-adapted multireference coupled cluster theory, one of the earliest developers of the coupled cluster based linear response theory for energy differences of spectroscopic interest; formulated field-theories based on the notion of extended normal ordering for general expectation values, covering correlated reference states, thermal traces and stochastic averages; methods for direct determination of cumulants of the reduced density matrices; developed a general non-perturbative operator cumulant expansion for real- and imaginary-time quantum dynamics. The formulation yields in the imaginary time-domain the finite-temperature version of the multi-reference dynamical-coupled cluster theory.

Other Contributions: Mukherjee edited the titles Aspects of Many-Body Effects in Molecules and Extended Systems (Springer, 1989) and Applied Many-Body Methods in Spectroscopy and Electronic Structure (Plenum Press, 1992). He was Member of Advisory Editorial Board of the journal Theoretica Chimica Acta. He is a Member of the Editorial Board of the CRC Press in Physical Chemistry, and an Editor of Physica Scripta.

Awards and Honours: Mukherjee received Asutosh Mukherjee Prize (1965); SS Bhatnagar Prize (1987); Jagdish Shankar Endowment Lecture and the Sadhan Basu Memorial Lecture of Indian National Science Academy (1994),  and Silver Medal of he Chemical Research of India (1999). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1987), Bangalore; Foundation Fellow of West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology (1988). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Science for the Developing World, the International Acdemy of Quantum Molecular Science, the Asia-Pacific Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (APATCC) and the American Institute of Chemists. He is a recipient of the Humboldt Prize, of the Fukui Medal of the APATCC and an awardee of the Coulson Lectureship of the Center of Computational Chemistry of University of Athens, Georgia.