Charusita Chakravarty was born on May 5th 1964 and passed on March 29th 2016. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Sukhamoy and Lalita Chakravarty. Although she was born in the United States, she was raised in Delhi, India and eventually gave up her American citizenship in her twenties. She was an only daughter who became an Indian professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in chemistry and a passionate researcher. She was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in the field of chemical science and the B.M. Birla Science Award. She was also a member of the Centre for Computational Material Science in Bangalore. Unfortunately she had a long and rough battle with breast cancer and eventually was the caused of her passing. When Charusita was old enough, she was selected as the National Science Talent Scholar. She then passed the Joint Entrance Exam of the Indian Institute of Technology. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science from University of Delhi. She then went to do Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge University, England. Later on she joined the Doctorate of Philosophy program at Cambridge University where she wrote her thesis on the spectra and dynamics of phenols. She then earned her Post Doctoral Scholar at the University of California. Thereafter, she visited India briefly and returned to Cambridge, England as a Gulbenkian junior research fellow. By 1994, she returned permanently to India where she worked in the India Institute of Technology. At first the director was hesitating in giving her a teaching position as she did not earn a master’s degree in India. Eventually she was offer a position in India Institute of Technology Department of Chemistry till she passed away. During her time in the institution, she gave a research proposal to do research on atomic and molecular clusters. Her research made her famous for doing specialized application of path integral Monte Carlo simulation to unravel quantum mechanical effects in the properties of atomic and molecular clusters. In addition, she was interested in theoretical chemistry and chemical physics, structure and dynamics of liquids, water and hydration, nucleation and self-assembly. Charusita was an inspiration with her contribution to science. I know in my generation, most women had difficulty enrolling to college. I am glad that she was able to further her education and do what she was passionate about. She was a great role model for women to further education and displayed women are just as capable as men in the field of science. Although she had trouble working at the college, even though she has a PhD in a different country is ridiculous.

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