About Prasanta Chandra MahalanobisPrasanta Chandra Mahalanobis FRS (29 June 1893 – 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and applied statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and contributed to the design of large-scale sample surveys.
Early life
Mahalanobis belonged to a family of Bengali landed gentry who lived in Bikrampur (now in Bangladesh). His grandfather Gurucharan (1833–1916) moved to Calcutta in 1854 and built up a business, starting a chemist shop in 1860. Gurucharan was influenced by Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905), father of the Nobel-prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore. Gurucharan was actively involved in social movements such as the Brahmo Samaj, acting as its Treasurer and President. His house on 210 Cornwallis Street was the center of the Brahmo Samaj. Gurucharan married a widow against social traditions. His elder son Subodhchandra (1867–1954) was the father of P. C. Mahalanobis. He was a distinguished educationist who studied physiology at Edinburgh University and later became a Professor at the Presidency College, eventually becoming the head of the department of Physiology. Subodhchandra also became a member of the Senate of the Calcutta University. Born in the house at 210 Cornwallis Street, P. C. Mahalanobis, grew up in a socially active family surrounded by intellectuals and reformers.
Mahalanobis received his early schooling at the Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta graduating in 1908. He then joined the Presidency College, Calcutta where he was taught by teachers who included Jagadish Chandra Bose, Sarada Prasanna Das and Prafulla Chandra Ray. Meghnad Saha was a year junior and Subhas Chandra Bose was two years his junior at college. and received a Bachelor of Science degree with honours in physics in 1912. He left for England in 1913 to join the University of London. He however missed a train and stayed with a friend at King's College, Cambridge. He was impressed by King's College Chapel there and his host's friend M. A. Candeth suggested that he could try joining there, which he did. He did well in his studies at King's, but also took an interest in cross-country walking and punting on the river. He interacted with the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan during the latter's time at Cambridge. After his Tripos in physics, Mahalanobis worked with C. T. R. Wilson at the Cavendish Laboratory. He took a short break and went to India and here he was introduced to the Principal of Presidency College and was invited to take classes in physics.
He went back to England and was introduced to the journal Biometrika. This interested him so much that he bought a complete set and took them to India. He discovered the utility of statistics to problems in meteorology, anthropology and began working on it on his journey back to India.
In Calcutta, Mahalanobis met Nirmalkumari, daughter of Herambhachandra Maitra, a leading educationist and member of the Brahmo Samaj. They married on 27 February 1923 although her father did not completely approve of it. The contention was partly due to Mahalanobis's opposition to various clauses in the membership of the student wing of the Brahmo Samaj, including restraining members from drinking and smoking. Sir Nilratan Sircar, P. C. Mahalanobis's uncle took part in the wedding ceremony in place of the father of the bride.
Indian Statistical Institute
Many colleagues of Mahalanobis took an interest in statistics and the group grew in the Statistical Laboratory located in his room at the Presidency College, Calcutta. A meeting was called on 17 December 1931 with Pramatha Nath Banerji (Minto Professor of Economics), Nikhil Ranjan Sen (Khaira Professor of Applied Mathematics) and Sir R. N. Mukherji. The meeting led to the establishment of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), and formally registered on 28 April 1932 as a non-profit distributing learned society under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860.
The Institute was initially in the Physics Department of the Presidency College and the expenditure in the first year was Rs. 238. It gradually grew with the pioneering work of a group of his colleagues including S. S. Bose, J. M. Sengupta, R. C. Bose, S. N. Roy, K. R. Nair, R. R. Bahadur, Gopinath Kallianpur, D. B. Lahiri and C. R. Rao. The institute also gained major assistance through Pitamber Pant, who was a secretary to the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Pant was trained in statistics at the Institute and took a keen interest in the institute.
In 1933, the journal Sankhya was founded along the lines of Karl Pearson's Biometrika.
The institute started a training section in 1938. Many of the early workers left the ISI for careers in the United States and with the government of India. Mahalanobis invited J. B. S. Haldane to join him at the ISI and Haldane joined as a Research Professor from August 1957 and stayed on until February 1961. He resigned from the ISI due to frustrations with the administration and disagreements with Mahalanobis's policies. He was also very concerned with the frequent travels and absence of the director and complained that the ... journeyings of our Director define a novel random vector. Haldane however helped the ISI grow in biometrics.
In 1959, the institute was declared as an institute of national importance and a deemed university.
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