Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju is an Indian chemist and educationist who has contributed substantially to the themes of crystal engineering and weak hydrogen bonding. He has authored books on these subjects in 1989 and 1999. He has co-authored a textbook in crystal engineering (2011). He is one of the most highly cited Indian scientists (h index = 101) and has been recognised by awards such as the Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis 2000, the ISA Medal for Science 2018 of the University of Bologna, the van der Waals Prize 2023 of ICNI Strasbourg, and the TWAS Prize in Chemistry 2000. He served as President of the International Union of Crystallography for the triennium 2011–2014. He has been conferred the first 'Arivé Guru' award (2022) of Karnatak University, Dharwad. He is a member of the India Science-20 Secretariat in G20 India Presidency Year 2023. He is the author of a book on the Constitution of India and governance structures (2022) entitled "Bharat: India 2.0". Biography Gautam Desiraju was born 21 August 1952 in Madras, India. He had his schooling in Cathedral and John Connon Boys School in Bombay and obtained his BSc (1972) from St. Xavier's College, Bombay. He obtained his PhD (1976) from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he worked under the supervision of David Y. Curtin and Iain C. Paul. 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 in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He joined the University of Hyderabad in 1979 as a lecturer and was promoted as reader in 1984 and 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 in 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 is a past president of the International Union of Crystallography during 2011–2014. He was the chair of the first Gordon Research Conference in Crystal Engineering, 2010 and is now a member of the Vice Chancellor's Strategic Advisory Council of the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES) Dehradun, as well as a member of the Academic Council of Rishihood University Sonepat. He is a recipient of