Subhash C. Basak, Founder and Chairman of the Indo-US Workshop on Mathematical chemistry series, had the first idea of an Indo-US workshop after participating at the First International conference on mathematical chemistry, organized at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA, by Professors R. B. King and D. H. Rouvray during 18-22 April 1983. During the 1980s, Basak discussed the idea with his colleagues in USA, India and Europe who reacted to it very positively. But the main hurdle was the substantial amount of funding needed during those days to have an onsite international meeting. Around 1986-87 Basak was appointed in a research scientist position at the newly created Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI), University of Minnesota, Duluth. He was in the environmental chemistry program of NRRI and would carry out research on computational toxicology and development of novel graph theory descriptors. Some results of that research were presented at the International Conference on Mathematical and Computer Modelling during the 1980s and 1990s and published in associated journal Mathematical Modelling. Another forum for the dissemination of results of mathematical chemistry research and publication was the Pacifichem conference, a joint conference of all national chemical societies of the Pacific rim countries. This was organized jointly by Professors Haruo Hosoya of Japan, Milan Randic from USA, and Paul Mezey of Canada.

Since the early 1990s Subhash Basak had been discussing the idea of a binational Indo-US mathematical chemistry workshop with top administrators of NRRI/ University of Minnesota and received enthusiastic support and financial backing to organize the first event in India. The idea of an Indo-US Workshop was also supported by pioneers of mathematical chemistry like Professors Milan Randic, Alexandru T Balaban , Nenad Trinajstic and other reputed scientists from China, Croatia, Slovenia, etc., who would regularly visit NRRI to do collaborative research with Basak’s team at NRRI. Since 1990, during his trips to India, Subhash Basak discussed the workshop idea with various Indian academic personalities. Finally, in 1997, he visited Vishwa Bharati University where Professor Dilip K. Sinha was the Vice Chancellor. Professor Sinha enthusiastically agreed to become the Indian anchorman of an Indo-US mathematical Chemistry workshop. Thus, on 9 January 1998, we had the inauguration of the five-day First Indo-US Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry on the campus of Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, under the auspicious Mango trees of Rabindranath Tagore,with the lighting of the holy lamps in the traditional manner.

Professor D. K. Sinha was the Chairman of the event from India and Subhash C. Basak of NRRI/ University of Minnesota, Duluth, was the chairman of the first workshop from USA. You can see Professor Sinha, the then VC of Visva Bharati, and Subhash C. Basak lighting the lamps with Dr. Michael J. Lalich, Director of NRRI and Professor Milan Randic on the Dias. This was a highly successful workshop with speakers from countries of four continents, viz., Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. Papers presented at the meeting were published in American Chemical Society publication: Journal of Chemical Information and Compute science (JCICS) after peer review.

Subsequently, the Indo-US organizers had seven more workshops, the second on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth (2000); the Third Indo-US Workshop, at the University of Minnesota campus in Duluth, Minnesota (2003); Fourth event of the workshop series at the University of Pune, Maharashtra, India (2005); Fifth Indo-US workshop on the campus of University of Minnesota, Duluth; Sixth workshop at the Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, West Bengal India (2010); Seventh event of the series on the campus of PRIST University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India (2012).

For the First seven events of the Indo-US Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry series, Subhash C. Basak and Dilip K Sinha were the Chairpersons for the events from USA and India, respectively. Unfortunately, Professor Sinha passed away in 2021. Since then, Subhash C. Basak is guiding the workshop series.

While the first seven workshops were in-person meetings, the eighth workshop was organized on virtual mode (online) centered around the campus of Sharda University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India during 13-17 September 2022. Papers presented at the workshop are being published in the Journal of Mathematical Chemistry after peer-review.

The Ninth Indo-US Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry, the Silver Jubilee Year event, will be organized on the campus of Saranathan College of Engineering , Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India, during 6-10 January 2025 as a mixed (in-person as well as a virtual) mode. In order to mentor young students in the subject area, we developed another conference series called “Indo-US lecture series on discrete mathematical chemistry,” which had four events in the series—Bengaluru (Karnataka); Kalpatta (Kerala); Tiruchirappalli (Tamil Nadu), and Hyderabad (Andra Pradesh).

It is noteworthy that although the workshops were called Indo-US, those were forums for deliberations by competent international scientists. A review of the programs would testify that scientists from 4-5 continents participated in each event.

Because some researchers from South America were coming to our Indo- US events both in India and Duluth, MN, USA, it was felt that one N-S America axis on mathematical chemistry was needed. Therefore, a new workshop series “Mathematical Chemistry workshop of the Americas” was created involving countries of North and South Americas. We had two events in that series and based on the presentations had a two-volume book “Advances in Mathematical Chemistry and Applications,“ published by Elsevier/ Bentham. Professor Dilip K. Sinha and Professors Basak and Sinha jointly developed a conspectus (Pustikā, पुस्तिका in Sanskrit).