Abhik Ghosh

Abhik Ghosh was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, in 1964. He attended St. Lawrence High School (1971–1981) and South Point High School (1981–1983). As a child, he learned Sanskrit from his grandmother Ila Ghosh (née Roy), a language he still speaks and reads fluently.

Abhik obtained a B. Sc. (Honours) in chemistry from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, in 1987, winning the University Medal of the Faculty of Science. The same year, he moved to the University of Minnesota, where he completed a PhD under the supervision of Regents' Professor Paul G. Gassman (while also collaborating with Jan Almlöf) in 1992 and subsequently also postdoctoral research with Lawrence Que Jr. During this period, Abhik reported some of the first high-quality ab initio and density functional theory calculations on bioinorganic systems, helping lay the foundation of the now thriving field of computational bioinorganic chemistry. He did a brief, second postdoc with David Bocian at the University of California Riverside, in the course of which he derived significant new insight into the problem diatomic ligand discrimination by heme proteins.[3]

After postdoctoral stints in Minnesota and California, he moved to UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in 1996, where he has remained ever since. He has had several secondary positions/affiliations: Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center[4] at the University of California San Diego (1997–2004), Outstanding Younger Researcher awardee of the Research Council of Norway (2004–2010), a co-principal investigator at the national center of excellence Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (2007–2017), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, on many occasions (2006–2016). He edited two books, The Smallest Biomolecules: Diatomics and their Interactions with Heme Proteins (Elsevier, 2008),[5] a monograph on the subject, and Letters to a Young Chemist (Wiley, 2011), a popular science book on careers in chemistry research.[6][7][8][9] In 2014, he coauthored Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements (Wiley) with Steffen Berg,[10] which won the 2015 Prose Award for 'best textbook in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics'.[11][12] He has served on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (1999–2001, 2005–2007) and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines (2000–) and Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (2007–present). He has authored/coauthored over 250 scientific papers, which have been cited over 12,000 times with an h-index of 64 (according to Google Scholar).[1][2] In 2022, he received the Hans Fischer Career Award for lifetime contributions to porphyrin science. He is a member of several national and international academies including the European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

Selected routes to 4d and 5d metallocorroles (ref 19).

Magazine frontispiece depicting the hydrogen-bonded core of a porphyrin cis tautomer; design by authors

Ghosh has contributed to many areas of porphyrin-related research. His early contributions include the use of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to study short-strong hydrogen bonds in porphyrin-type molecules[13] and also some of the first large-scale ab initio calculations applied to porphyrins[14] and other bioinorganic systems.[15] He has had an abiding interest in the phenomenon of ligand noninnocence[16] and has contributed substantially to studying the phenomenon in transition metal nitrosyl[17] and corrole[18][19][20] derivatives. In recent years, he has developed the field of heavy element corrole derivatives, which are unusual size-mismatched metal-ligand assemblies that incorporate a large 4d or 5d transition metal ion within the sterically compressed central cavity of a corrole.[21] In this area he has reported some of the first examples of ⁹⁹Tc,[22] rhenium,[23][24] osmium,[25][26] platinum,[27][28] and gold[29][30] corroles. Despite their size-mismatched character, many of these complexes have proved rugged and found applications as near-IR phosphorescent photosensitizers in oxygen sensing[31][32] and photodynamic therapy as well as in dye-sensitized solar cells.[33][34] Ghosh's work on 4d and 5d elements has also led to new insights into metal-metal bonds[35] (quadruple bonds) and relativistic effects.[36]

Cover of American Scientist, November–December, 2019

In 2017, Ghosh and coworkers reported the first example of a stable cis tautomer of a free-base porphyrin in the form of a termolecular hydrogen-bonded complex.[37] Subsequently, they found additional examples of porphyrin cis tautomers, proving that they can be reliably obtained from virtually any strongly saddled porphyrin co-crystallized with two molecules of a hydrogen donor (typically water or an alcohol).

Cover of Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry; design by the authors.

In collaboration with linguist Paul Kiparsky, Ghosh has written about the possible influence of Pāṇini's Sanskrit grammar, in particular the periodic Sanskrit alphabet (the Shiva sutras), on Mendeleev's conception of the periodic table, a potentially important, new insight into the history of the periodic table.[38] Ghosh has also published popular articles on arrow pushing,[39] on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its first use by Sir Robert Robinson, and on the impact of relativity in chemistry,[40] among many others.

Cover of Inorganic Chemistry, April 11, 2022

Ghosh has been involved in a variety of diversity initiatives. The 2011 book Letters to a Young Chemist[6] with a young woman as the protagonist and several contributions by leading female scientists has gone through numerous reprints and remains a bestseller. In 2020-2021, Ghosh published two biographical essays[41][42] on the late Martin Gouterman, a noted porphyrin chemist and one of the first openly gay/LGBT scientists, drawing a parallel with astronomer and gay rights activist Frank Kameny (see LGBT history for a more general discussion). Subsequently, he co-edited a Virtual Issue on “Out in Inorganic Chemistry: A Celebration of LGBTQIAPN+ Inorganic Chemists” highlighting queer authors in Inorganic Chemistry and other American Chemical Society journals.[43][44]

• Buntrock, R. E. (January 2012). "Review: Letters to a Young Chemist". Choice. p. 913.

• Abhik Ghosh publications indexed by Google Scholar