Shridhar Ramchandra Gadre earned his BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Pune followed by a PhD degree (1978) on electron momentum densities of molecules under the supervision of PT Narasimhan at IIT, Kanpur. He did post-doctoral research with Robert Parr at the University of North Carolina and Robert Matcha at the University of Houston (1979-80) on density functional theory and rigorous inequalities in quantum chemistry. After returning to India, Gadre joined the University of Pune as a Lecturer (1980) and subsequently became a Professor of Chemistry (1988). He served as the Head of the Department of Chemistry, Pune University (1996-99) and also founded the Interdisciplinary School of Scientific Computing at the University of Pune (1995). Presently he is continuing as its Director.

Academic and Research Achievements: Gadre initiated teaching and research in theoretical and computational chemistry at the University of Pune. His research interests include study of molecular scalar fields, especially, their topographical characteristics. He proposed, in 1985, a new maximum entropy principle in conjugate spaces, which has been actively followed up by several researchers. Gadre has explored molecular properties, reactivity and weak intermolecular interactions through molecular electrostatic potential, and electron momentum density. He explored inequalities in quantum chemistry with RK Pathak and pioneered the use of parallel computers for developing efficient ab initio quantum chemical codes. Since 1994, his group is engaged in development of a large molecule parallel ab initio code, termed as molecular tailoring approach (MTA). Web versions of the codes (Webprop and WebMTA) have been made freely available to external users since 2008. Gadre has published over 185 research articles in high-impact journals and co-authored a monograph. He has mentored 16 PhDs and guided over 40 students for MSc projects.

Others Contributions: Professor Gadre was a Member of the Editorial Board of The Proceedings of Indian Academy of Sciences (Chem Sci) and Resonance. He has been a Member of the Academic Council, Board of Studies in Chemistry (1996-99), and Research and Recognition of Chemistry (1999-2005) in Pune University. He was Chairman of the Xth plan Committee of the University of Pune (2002), and is the Co-ordinator of the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) since 1998. He has been closely associated with the International Chemistry Olympiad activities of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai (since 2000) and working as the National Co-ordinator of DS Kothari Post-doctoral Fellowship Scheme of UGC since 2007. He was Member, INSA Council during 2001-03.

Awards and Honours: Gadre is a recipient of INSA Medal for Young Scientists (1982). Among several other honours and prizes that he received are SS Bhatnagar Prize (1993), VK Joag Prize (1994), Jagdish Shankar Memorial Lecture of INSA (2000), Silver Medal by the Chemical Research Society of India, Bangalore (2004), and Professor T Navaneeth Rao National Best Teacher Award by the Andhra Pradesh Science Academy (2004). He was selected for the JC Bose Fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology (2007). He is a Fellow of the Maharashtra Academy of Science (1989) and of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1992).