Ajit J. Thakkar was born in 1950 in Poona, India. He has lived in Canada since 1969. He obtained his B.Sc. in 1973 and, three years later, his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from Queen's University at Kingston. In 1980, he joined the University of Waterloo as a research assistant professor. Four years later, he moved to the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton where he has remained to this day. He was promoted to professor in 1988, served as chair of the chemistry department from 1993 to 1999, and was awarded a University Research Professorship in 2002 [photo]. He took early retirement in July 2014 and was appointed Professor Emeritus in May 2015 [photo]. He has since pursued research in a more leisurely fashion.

His research program in the theoretical and computational prediction of molecular properties and interactions has led to more than 265 research papers. His research was recognized by the awards of a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1984, the Canadian Society for Chemistry's Noranda Award (now called the Laidler Award) for distinguished contributions to physical chemistry in 1991 [Noranda award photos], the European Society for Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering ICCMSE prize in 2004 [ICCMSE prize photos], and the CATC Honorary Lectureship of the Canadian Association of Theoretical Chemists in 2018 [CATC award photos].

Twenty four of his former research students and post-doctoral fellows now hold academic positions at universities in locations all over the world: Canada, the United States of America, India, Greece, Poland, China, Brazil, Taiwan, and Namibia.

He is an Editor of Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, is on the editorial boards of Chemical Data Collections and the Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering, and on the advisory board of Chinese Chemical Letters. In the past he served on the advisory editorial boards of the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and the Canadian Journal of Chemistry. He has served on the scientific committees of more than a dozen international conferences, and various NSERC and ERC committees. He is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada.

His non-academic interests include travel, photography, and philosophy. He cherishes his experiences such as crossing the Sahara in a truck, trekking through the rain forests in Zaire and Ecuador, visiting the Galapagos Islands and Cape Horn.