Narayan S. Hosmane was born in Gokarn, near Goa in Southern India, and is a B.S. and MS graduate of Karnatak University, India. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Inorganic Chemistry in 1974 from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, under the supervision of Professor Evelyn Ebsworth. After a brief postdoctoral research training in Professor Frank Glockling's laboratory at the Queen's University of Belfast (1974-75), he joined the Lambeg Research Institute in Northern Ireland, and then moved to USA in 1976 to conduct research in synthetic Boron Chemistry.

After a brief postdoctoral work with W. E. Hill & F. A. Johnson at Auburn University and then with Russell Grimes at the University of Virginia, in 1979 he joined the faculty at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). In 1982 he joined the faculty at Southern Methodist University, where he became Professor of Chemistry in 1989. In 1998 he moved to Northern Illinois University as a Presidential Research Professor and is currently a Distinguished Research and Board of Trustees Professor. Dr.

Hosmane is widely acknowledged to have an international reputation as "one of the world leaders in an interesting, important, and very active area of boron chemistry that is related to Cancer Research" and as "one of the most influential boron chemists practicing today." Hosmane has received numerous international awards that include but are not limited to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Senior U.S. Scientist Research Prize twice (2001 & 2007); the Boron in the USA Award for Distinguished Achievements in Boron Science (1996); the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Distinguished Chair of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad, India (2003); and the Gauss Professorship of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in Germany (2005). He has published over 270 papers in leading scientific journals.