Basudeb DasSarma was a chemist and faculty at the University College of Science and Technology of Calcutta University. He was among an early group of Indian scholars and professionals to emigrate to the US . He did groundbreaking research with John C. Bailar, Jr. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, won an American Chemical Society award in 1971 for his contributions to the understanding of coordination and stereochemistry of metal complexes, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1972. He was a Professor of Chemistry at West Virginia State College from 1966 to 1992, President of the West Virginia Academy of Science, 1981-82, and a community leader and spokesman on environmental issues in the Kanawha Valley around Charleston, West Virginia. His memoir was published in 2010 posthumously .