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Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Profile, Career, Achievements, Awards
Father of Indian Statistics: Prof Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Profile, Career, Achievements, Awards
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was an Indian scientist and an applied statistician. He is the founder of the Institute of Statistics of India (ISI) and had contributed to the design of large-scale surveys.
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is known & recalled for the distance of Mahalanobis, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the first Planning Commission of Free India. He made pioneering studies in anthropometry in India.
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was born on 29 June 1893 to a Bengali family in Calcutta, British India. He died at the age of 78 on 28th June 1972. Even in his last days of life, he was dedicated towards his research and duties as the Secretary and Director of the Indian Statistical Institute.
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis did his schooling from Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta in 1908. He completed B.Sc in Physics with honors from Presidency College, Calcutta in 1912. Later in 1913, he went to England to join the University of London.
The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Kolkata, set up by Prof. PC Mahalanobis in 1931 and was declared an autonomous “Institute of National Importance” through an act of Parliament in 1959, celebrates 29th June as the “Worker Day
Prof. PC Mahalanobis during his career received several awards and honors followed by Padma Vibhushan (1968) the second-highest civilian award of the Republic of India.
The Government of India decided in the year 2006, to celebrate Mahalanobis birthday, on 29th June every year, as National Statistics Day.
