Gautam R. Desiraju





Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju (born 21 August 1952) is an Indian structural chemist and educationist, and an emeritus professor at the Indian Institute of Science. He has worked on crystal engineering and weak hydrogen bonding, publishing seminal texts in 1989 and 1999. He also co-authored a textbook on crystal engineering in 2011. With more than 65,000 citations and an h-index of 104, he is the second most highly cited scientist in India. In 2022, he authored "Bharat: India 2.0", in which he argues that the present constitution is inadequate for a 5,000-year-old civilization.

Biography
Gautam Desiraju was born in Chennai, India. He completed his schooling at Cathedral and John Connon Boys School in Bombay and obtained his BSc in 1972 from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Under the guidance of David Y. Curtin and Iain C. Paul, he earned his PhD in 1976 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He worked between 1976 and 1978 in the Research Laboratories of Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, NY. From 1978 to 1979, he was a research fellow at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

In 1979, he joined the University of Hyderabad as a lecturer, was promoted to reader in 1984, and became a professor in 1990. He spent a year (1988–1989) in the CR&D department of DuPont in Wilmington as a visiting scientist. After 30 years at the University of Hyderabad, he joined the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2009. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Angewandte Chemie, Chemical Communications, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He served as president of the International Union of Crystallography from 2011 to 2014 and chaired the first Gordon Research Conferences in Crystal Engineering in 2010. He is a member of the Vice Chancellor's Strategic Advisory Council of the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, and a member of the Academic Council of Rishihood University Sonepat.

Desiraju has received honorary doctorate degrees from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, Rayalaseema University, Kurnool, and Gulbarga University, Kalaburagi. In August 2017, he organized the 24th Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography in Hyderabad. He was awarded the Acharya P. C. Ray Medal (2015) by the University of Calcutta for innovation in science and technology, the ISA Medal (2018) for Science by the University of Bologna, and the van der Waals Prize (2023) by ICNI, Strasbourg.

Major research contributions
Desiraju's contribution to crystal engineering focuses on the concept of the supramolecular synthon, a small sub-structural unit that represents the entire crystal structure of a molecular solid. Predicting a crystal structure from a molecular structure is challenging and not easily derivable from functional groups. Identifying supramolecular synthons simplifies this complex problem. The supramolecular synthon concept is now widely used by crystal engineers in the design of molecular crystals and pharmaceutical co-crystals, which have significant scientific and commercial importance. Crystal engineering is akin to supramolecular synthesis in the solid state, with a direct analogy between Desiraju's supramolecular synthon and the molecular synthon proposed for organic synthesis by E. J. Corey.

Desiraju's second area of contribution involves the recognition that weakly activated groups, such as the C-H group, can act as donors of hydrogen bonds in molecular and biomolecular systems. Although weak hydrogen bonds had been discussed sporadically since the 1930s, it was only after the 1980s that the idea of weakly activated groups forming hydrogen bonds gained acceptance in the chemical community. Desiraju was among the few structural chemists who, in those early days, argued that C-H...O and other weak interactions possess hydrogen bond character.

Desiraju has authored approximately 479 research papers and a total of 512 publications as listed in the Web of Science. In addition to his three books on crystal engineering and hydrogen bonding, he has edited three multi-author books on these topics in structural chemistry. Over the past 43 years, he has supervised the PhD work of nearly 40 students.

General writing and new book Bharat: India 2.0
Desiraju has authored several commentaries on science, the evolution of chemistry as a subject, emergence and complexity, and research habits and practices in various cultures. He has also written articles about the state of science education and research in India and the current status of chemistry research in the country, identifying problems and suggesting solutions for issues partly rooted in traditional values while aspiring for contemporary advancements.

Despite being American-educated, Desiraju believes that inculcating a sense of "Indian-ness" in Indian students and young scientists will foster a modern competitive spirit and adherence to professionalism in India's education and research sectors. He contends that the absence of this essential spirit is a major cause of the current sluggishness in India's R&D sectors. In this context, he has written his most recent book, Bharat: India 2.0, which portrays India as a civilized state where the concept of dharma should be explicitly included in the constitution, and where the country's full diversity is optimally showcased. In his talks, he praises the visions of Savarkar and speaks against the separation of Pakistan from British India.

ISI Ratings
Desiraju has written four books. His first book on crystal engineering, published in 1989, has around 4,000 citations. His second book, co-authored with Thomas Steiner in 1999, on the weak hydrogen bond, has around 7,500 citations. His third book, a textbook on crystal engineering published in 2010, is co-authored with J. J. Vittal and A. Ramanan. His 1995 review in Angewandte Chemie has been cited more than 5,000 times and is the second most cited paper from India. Among his 479 publications, seven have been cited 1,000 or more times, 14 over 500 times, 41 over 200 times, and 81 over 100 times. As of July 2022, he has an h-index of 102 in Web of Science, making him the second most highly cited scientist in India and the one with the highest m-index. His fourth book, Bharat: India 2.0 (2022), is his first non-scientific publication.