National Statistics Day: Remembering P.C. Mahalanobis, Father of Modern Statistics of India

A measure of comparison between two data sets, now called Mahalanobis distance was developed by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (P.C. Mahalanobis). He is called the Father of Modern Statistics of India. June 2, his birth anniversary is recognized as National Statistics Day.

Hyderabad: Born on June 29, 1893, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, P.C Mahalanobis or called as PCM by his friends is known as the father of Modern Statistics Of India. This day is also celebrated as National Statistics Day. He was the member of India's First Planning Commission. Mahalanobis can easily be called a pioneer who brought the concept of planned governance to India. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in 1932.

National Statistics Day: Remembering P.C. Mahalanobis, Father of Modern Statistics of India

PCM was born in a family of intellectuals. He studied in Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta (now called as Kolkata) and then studied Physics in Presidency College. After completing his graduation in 1912, he went to King’s College, Cambridge where he met mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also served as a secretary to Rabindranath Tagore and was also associated with Visva-Bharati University.

National Statistics Day: Remembering P.C. Mahalanobis, Father of Modern Statistics of India

He also received Weldon Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford (1944) and Fellow of the Royal Society, London (1945). He became fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, UK, in 1954. Top statistical organizations in erstwhile USSR and the United States also honoured him, as did the King’s College, Cambridge

PCM was born to Probodh Chandra and Nirodbashini and his grandfather, Gurucharan was a follower of Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore. In 1923, he married Nirmala Kumari, daughter of educationist Herambhachandra Maitra.

Google Doodle also marked the achievements of P.C. Mahalanobis with the help of illustrations drawn by Nishant Chowksi.Choksi’s art projected the Bengali scientist in terms of “Mahalanobis distance”, a statistical measure frequently used in the studies of population distribution.