Sourav Pal received MSc (Chemistry) (1977) from IIT Kanpur, after which he completed PhD under the supervision of Debashis Mukherjee in the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. Subsequently, he joined National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune as Scientist (1982) and continues to work there as Head of Physical and Materials Chemistry Division. He received PhD (1985) from Calcutta University. He was Post-Doctoral Associate at University of Florida (1986-87), Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Heidelberg (1987) and Visiting Professor at Institute for Molecular Science, Okazaki (1997).

Academic and Research Achievements: Pal has done extensive research in many-body electronic structure theory with focus on coupled-cluster theory for structure, spectra and properties. His work, starting with his early formulation of response theory in single-reference coupled-cluster theory to the pioneering response formulations in multi-reference version, has been highly recognized in the area. He has worked on excited states, and more recently on electric properties of excited states. He has made extensive studies in the area of chemical reactivity using conceptual density functional theory. Of late, he has been active in computational material science, contributing significantly to the structure, bonding and catalysis of zeolites, aromaticity/anti-aromaticity of mixed metal clusters and more recently to the hydrogen storage materials. He has published about 150 research papers till 2008, which have received a large number of citations. He has been instrumental in setting up a Center of Excellence in Scientific Computing at NCL. He is active as Adjunct Professor in the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research at Pune.

Other Contributions: Sourav Pal successfully completed several projects from various funding agencies in India, two projects under the Indo-French Center for the Promotion of Advanced Research, and entered into collaboration with European Union partners in the area of computational material science. He also served on the Editorial boards of several journals.

Awards and Honours: Dr Pal was conferred several awards, notably the SS Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences (2000), INSA Young Scientist Award (1987), CSIR Young Scientist Award (1989), PB Gupta Memorial Award by IACS, Kolkata (1993), Dr Jagdish Shankar Memorial Lecture Award by INSA (2006), Bimla Churn Law Memorial Lecture Award by IACS (2005), Dai-Ichi Karkaria Endowment Fellowship by UICT, Mumbai (2004-05), JC Bose National Fellowship by DST (2008), and Silver Medal by CRSI (2009). He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad.