Pradeep Mathur, born on 17 August 1955 in Teheran to Damyanti and Amrit Dayal. Mathur and his older brother, renowned physicist at TIFR, Deepak Mathur (married to Helen Mathur) were both brought up and educated in London whilst their father Amrit Dayal worked as a senior diplomatic official at the Indian High Commission in London and Accra. Mathur continued to live in England till he moved to Yale. He gained an honours degree at the University of North London in 1976 and secured a PhD from Keele University in 1981 before moving onto Yale University as a post-doctoral researcher. Mathur chose to move  to India and joined Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1984 as a member of the faculty of chemistry where he held several positions before reaching the position of a professor and the head of the National Single Crystal X-ray Diffraction Facility. When the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore was established in 2009, Mathur was appointed as its founder director. At the end of his first five-year term, his contract was extended for a second term  and he continues to hold the position, simultaneously serving as a professor of the department of chemistry. He has been a visiting professor at University of Cambridge, University of Freiburg and University of Karlsruhe and has been associated with a number of scientific journals, viz. Organometallics, Journal of Organometallic Chemistry and Journal of Cluster Science as a member of their editorial boards.
Mathur is married to Vinita and the couple have two daughters, Nehika and Saloni.