Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was a renowned Indian scientist and statistician who is widely regarded as the father of statistics in India. He was born on June 29, 1893 in Calcutta, a city in British India. He came from a prominent Bengali Brahmin family of landed gentry and social reformers. He completed his early education in Calcutta and then graduated with honours in physics from Presidency College in 1912. He then moved to England to study physics and mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was introduced to statistics by one of his tutors at Cambridge and developed a keen interest in the subject. He returned to India in 1915 and joined Presidency College as a lecturer in physics. He also worked under C.V. Raman at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore during the summer vacations. He applied statistical methods to problems in anthropology, meteorology, and biology. He also collaborated with international scientists such as Ronald Fisher and Harold Hotelling. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in physics from Cambridge in 1927 and then founded the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta in 1931. He established ISI as a centre of excellence for research and education in statistics and related fields. He also initiated several national and international projects such as the International Crop Estimation Experiment, the Second World War sample surveys, the National Income Committee, the Pilot Socio-Economic Survey, and the International Comparison Project. He devised a measure of comparison between two data sets that is now known as the Mahalanobis distance. He also developed a model of economic planning that is known as the Feldman–Mahalanobis model. He introduced innovative techniques for conducting large-scale sample surveys and calculated acreages and crop yields by using the method of random sampling. He also supervised many students and postdocs who became eminent statisticians and economists. He was appointed as a member of the Planning Commission of India from 1955 to 1967 and played a key role in formulating India's strategy for industrialization in the Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61). He also established the National Sample Survey (NSS) in 1950 and the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) in 1951 to provide comprehensive socio-economic statistics for planning and policy making. He received many awards and honors for his contributions to science and society. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1945. He was also a member of several scientific academies such as the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, India, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1960, the Padma Vibhushan in 1968, and many other awards from various scientific societies and institutions. He was also named one of the seven 'Unsung Heroes' of the 20th century by Fortune magazine in 1999. He died on June 28, 1972 in Calcutta at the age of 78. He was cremated with full state honors. He is remembered as one of the greatest Indian scientists of the 20th century who made lasting impacts on statistics and economics.