A pathfinder for the science of statistics, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
was born on June 29, 1893 in Calcutta. He pioneered the
application of statistics to various fields of activity and sectors of national
development and the opening of Departments of Statistics for teaching
and research in a number of universities in India.
He was born into an enlightened family; his father was Prabodh
Chandra, and mother Nirodbasini. Young Mahalanobis had his early
schooling at the Brahmo Boys’ School and took his B.Sc. with honours in
physics from the Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1912. Next year he
joined the King’s College, Cambridge, and graduated in Tripos in
mathematics and physics; he was the only student that year to get a first class in physics. During
his short vacation in Calcutta, he got a teacher’s post in physics in the Presidency College.
It was a chance meeting inside the King’s College Library with his tutor, W. H. Macaulay, who
asked for his opinion on some volumes of Biometrika, a journal edited by Karl Pearson, a famous
British statistician, which kindled Mahalanobis’s life-long interest in statistics. He now devoted all
his free time to statistical studies. His real innovative foray into statistical studies began when one
of his mentors, Brajendranath Seal, Professor of Philosophy, wanted him to analyse the examination
results of Calcutta University in 1917. In 1927, while working in Karl Pearson’s Laboratory in
London, his extensive studies in the field of anthropometry gave rise to his discovery called the
‘Mahalanobis distance’ or the D statistic, a tool widely used in classification problems. Soon the
range of his studies widened and his help was sought by authorities in different fields, like
meteorology, agricultural field experiments, and prevention and control of floods in several parts
of India. The application of his techniques to different fields of study resulted in a number of
standard statistical methods.
Mahalanobis founded the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) on December 17, 1931 in the Physics
Department at the Presidency College. It was declared an ‘Institution of National Importance’ by an
Act of Parliament in 1959. Mahalanobis was elected Chairman of the U. N. Subcommission on
Statistical Sampling for four years in 1947. Mahalanobis made a very significant impact on India’s
planned development. In fact, the Second Five Year Plan was entirely based on the Plan Frame
involving his innovative concepts and methodologies.
A number of honours and awards were conferred on him in recognition of his enormous
achievements in statistics: the Weldon Medal from Oxford in 1944, election as Fellow of the Royal
Society (F.R.S.) next year, Ramanujan Gold Medal in 1968, and Padma Vibhushan the same year.
This greatest Indian statistician passed away on June 28, 1972, on the eve of his 79th birthday.
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