Sadhan Basu

Sadhan Basu (1922–1992) was an Indian physical chemist, academic and the Palit Professor of Chemistry at the University of Calcutta. He was known for his elucidation of the Quantum Mechanical Model of Robert S. Mulliken and his article, Degree of Polymerization and Chain Transfer in Methyl Methacrylate, co-authored by Jyotirindra Nath Sen and Santi R. Palit was the first published Indian article on polymer chemistry. He was an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemical Society of France, Indian Chemical Society, Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1962, for his contributions to chemical sciences.

Sadhan Basu, born on 2 January 1922 in the Indian state of West Bengal, after securing the degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Calcutta, spent his entire career at the university as a member of faculty. At the time of his superannuation, he held the Palit Professorship of Chemistry at the University College of Science, Technology & Agriculture. One of the pioneers of polymer chemistry in India, his studies were primarily in the fields of charge transfer interactions, ligand field spectra, hydrogen bonding, quantum chemistry and photochemistry. Focusing on the detection, and analysis of charge transfer band of molecular complexes and through experimental assignment of its vibrational structure, he supported the quantum mechanical model of the complexes originally propounded by Robert S. Mulliken, the winner of 1966 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In order to determine the -NH2 group in nylon, he developed a methodology which has since been accepted as a standard industrial procedure. He calculated the transition energies and oscillator strengths of aromatic polyhydrocarbons using the gas model prescribed by Shin'ichirō Tomonaga in 1950, demonstrated that extended catacondensed planar structures could be derived only by using 3-4-6 membered rings and employing Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov, illustrated that, unlike triplet transitions, the longest wavelength singlet transitions in linear polyenes converge to a limit.

Basu's researches were published in a number of articles and the article, Degree of Polymerization and Chain Transfer in Methyl Methacrylate, he and his co-authors, J. N. Sen and S. R. Palit, published in 1950 was the first Indian article on polymer chemistry. He was associated with International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, the Indian Journal of Chemistry and the Proceedings of the Proceedings of Indian National Science Academy as their associate editor and mentored a number of students in their doctoral researches. He also served the Indian National Science Academy council during 1982-84 as a member.

Sadhan Basu died on 5 October 1992, at the age 70. His scientific contributions have been documented in an article, Sadhan Basu — a physical chemist extraordinaire, published in Resonance journal in 2013.

The Indian National Science Academy elected Basu as a fellow in 1962 and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1965. A UGC National Professor during 1972–73, he became an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1975 and was a recipient of the Acharya J. C. Ghosh Gold Medal of Indian Chemical Society (1984) and the C. V. Raman Birth Centenary Commemoration Medal of the Indian Science Congress Association (1988). He was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Indian Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of France. The Indian Academy of Sciences issued a festschrift, Dedicated to Prof. Sadhan Basu on the occasion of his sixtyfifth birthday, on him in 1986 on his 65th birth anniversary and the contributors included Jack Simons, Debashis Mukherjee, Werner Kutzelnigg and George G. Hall among others. The Indian National Science Academy has instituted an annual oration, Professor Sadhan Basu Memorial Lecture in his honor and the University of Kolkata recognizes excellence in research in chemistry each year by an annual award, Professor Sadhan Basu Memorial Award.