Award-winning valuer Syamales Datta received his honours degree in physics from the University of Calcutta in 1963. Forced to find employment early, he nevertheless went on to pass the Professional Associate of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (ARICS) exams in 1971 while serving the Howrah Improvement Trust (HIT) as a Deputy Assistant Valuer. A series of promotions followed and in 1993 he was made the Chief Valuer of HIT, a post he held memorably up to his retirement from service in the spring of 2004. Datta is also life fellow of the Institution of Surveyors and the Institution of Valuers, both headquartered in New Delhi.
In the year 1993, Datta's first volume, Valuation of Real Property: Principles and Practice was published by Eastern Law House, Calcutta. The book became a hit among practising valuers and in 2004 a second edition was brought out. That book is a prescribed text for the Master of Valuation programme taught at the Institute of Science & Technology for Advanced Studies & Research (ISTAR), affiliated to the Sardar Patel University in Gujrat, inter alia, and is also sold on Amazon.com. Datta's contributions to periodicals and research are much sought after at valuation seminars and workshops.

Syamales Datta has taught valuation at the B.E. College (BESU) at Shibpur, Howrah and has also trained up departmental officials of the WB Valuation Board and the Life Insurance Corporation of India.
Datta has also been a visiting professor and research supervisor at Annamalai University for their M.Sc. programme. He has taught valuation at HUDCO, Institute of Urban Management (IUM), Institute of Engineering and Management (IEM), Institute of Local Government and Urban Studies (ILGUS) and Jadavpur University. On 28 Dec 2016 the Institution of Valuers ceremonially presented Syamales Datta the Valuer Excellence Award for his services.