an honorary doctorate degree of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, the Rayalaseema University, Kurnool and of the Gulbarga University, Kalaburagi. He organized, in August 2017, the 24th Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography in Hyderabad. He was awarded the Acharya P. C. Ray Medal (2015) of the University of Calcutta for innovation in science and technology, the ISA Medal (2018) for Science of the University of Bologna and the van der Waals Prize (2023) by ICNI, Strasbourg. Major research contributions Desiraju's contribution to the subject of crystal engineering has focus on the concept of the supramolecular synthon, which is a small sub-structural unit that is an adequate enough representation of the entire crystal structure of a molecular solid. The major problem in crystal engineering is that the prediction of a crystal structure from a molecular structure is very difficult and not easily derivable from functional groups. Identification of supramolecular synthons simplifies this otherwise intractable problem. The supramolecular synthon concept is now widely used by crystal engineers in the design of molecular crystals and pharmaceutical co-crystals, which are important from scientific and commercial viewpoints. Crystal engineering is effectively like supramolecular synthesis in the solid state, and there is a direct analogy between the supramolecular synthon of Desiraju and the molecular synthon that was proposed for organic synthesis by E. J. Corey. Desiraju's second area of contribution focuses on weakly activated groups like the C-H group can act as donors of hydrogen bonds in molecular and biomolecular systems. These weak hydrogen bonds had been discussed sporadically since the 1930s, but it was only after the 1980s that the idea of a weakly activated group forming hydrogen bonds gained acceptance in the chemical community. Desiraju was among the few structural chemists who argued in those early days that the C-H...O and other weak interactions have a hydrogen bond character. Desiraju has authored around 479 research papers and a total of 512 publications as given in the Web of Science. In addition to the three books on crystal engineering and hydrogen bonding, he has edited three multi-author books on these topics in structural chemistry. He has guided the PhD work of nearly 40 students over the past 43 years. General writing 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