Gautam R. Desiraju is a structural chemist who has been in the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India since 2009. Prior to this, he had been in the University of Hyderabad for 30 years. He has played a major role in the development and growth of the subject of crystal engineering. He is one of the most highly cited Indian scientists with more than 450 research papers, 60000+ citations and an h-index of 100.

At present, he is the chairman of the Governing Council of the Bose Institute, Kolkata.  His recent book “Bharat: India 2.0“ is his first publishing venture outside the scientific domain and is concerned with the constitutional history of India and the re-imagination of India as a civilizational state rather than a nation-state.