In December 1963, Basak joined the University of Rajshahi as a lecturer in the Department of Physics. In 1978, Basak was appointed as an Associate Professor by the University of Dhaka, but he preferred to stay in Rajshahi where he became associate professor in the later part of 1978. He was awarded a merit scholarship for securing the highest marks in the Faculty of Science and got admission at Imperial College, London. Owing to the 1965 Indo-Pak war, he could not avail the opportunity. In 1972, he went to the University of Birmingham with a Commonwealth Scholarship. He worked with the tensor polarized deuteron and the polarized He beams, the latter being the only one of its kind in the world. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1975.