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P.C. Mahalanobis: The father of Indian statistics who introduced concept of planned economy

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Mahalanobis, who was a member of India’s first Planning Commission, set up the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata in 1932.

New Delhi: Today is the 125th birth anniversary of India’s legendary statistician and mathematician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, who is also popularly known as the father of Indian statistics.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, in Mahalanobis’s honour declared 29 June as the National Statistics Day.

Mahalanobis, popularly called PCM by his colleagues and friends, founded the Indian Statistical Institute and was one of the main members of the first Planning Commission of India. In his capacity at the commission, Mahalanobis can easily be called a pioneer who brought the concept of planned governance to India.

Mahalanobis’s contribution to the field of statistics and mathematics was marked by a Google doodle, done by an acclaimed illustrator named Nishant Choksi. Choksi’s art projected the Bengali scientist in terms of “Mahalanobis distance”, a statistical measure frequently used in the studies of population distribution.

Biography

Mahalanobis was born on 29 June, 1893, to a family of intellectuals. His grandfather Gurucharan was involved in the Brahmo Samaj and was a follower of Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore. He studied in the Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta (as the city was known then) and then went to Presidency College to study Physics.

The mathematician was taught by Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray in Presidency college. As his juniors, he had famous astrophysicist Meghnad Saha and the iconic Subhas Chandra Bose. He graduated in 1912.

A group consisting of people with interest in statistics was formed in Presidency College. Along with Pramatha Nath Banerji (Minto Professor of Economics), Nikhil Ranjan Sen (Khaira Professor of Applied Mathematics) and Sir R.N. Mukherji, Mahalanobis established the Indian Statistical Institute in 1932. The institute was declared as an institute of national importance in 1959. In 1933, they started the journal Sankhya.

Studies abroad

Mahalanobis left for London in 1913 and joined King’s College, Cambridge. He met mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan at the university. He took a short break and returned to India where he was invited to teach Physics in Presidency College.

The scientist served as a secretary to Rabindranath Tagore and was also associated with Visva-Bharati University. Mahalanobis was awarded the Padma Vibhushan (1968), Weldon Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford (1944); Fellow of the Royal Society, London (1945).

The scientist is not only remembered for devising the Mahalanobis distance. His other contributions to statistics include the introduction of the concept of pilot surveys and for designing large-scale sample surveys.

The Indian Statistical Institute, under his leadership, grew out of the statistical laboratory in Presidency College, Calcutta (now Presidency University).

He died on 28th June 1972, just a day before his seventy-ninth birthday.

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