- By Prerna Targhotra
- Sat, 29 Jun 2024 09:31 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
National Statistics Day 2024: Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis or Professor Mahalanobis was a well-known Indian scientist and statistician who founded the Indian Statistical Institute and is remembered for his remarkable contributions. Also known as the ‘Father of Statistics’, Professor Mahalaobis was born on June 29, 1983, in Calcutta, now West Bengal and belonged to a prominent Bengali Brahmin family.
Mahalanobis grew up in a socially active family that was surrounded by reformers and intellectuals. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure and played a pivotal role in formalising India’s strategy for industrialisation in the second five-year plan (1956-1961).
After completing his graduation in Physics Honours from Presidency College in 1912, Mahalanobis moved to England to study Physics and Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. With his return to India, he accepted to teach Physics as a professor at Presidency College. On December 17, 1931, he established the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. He served as the Chairman of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Sampling from 1947 to 1951. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1968 by the government for his pioneering works.
Quotes By Professor Mahalanobis
A research journal serves that narrow borderland that separates the known from the unknown.
In India, there's a lack of appreciation of the need to cross-examine data, the responsibility of a statistician.
Population in India is widely differentiated in ethnic composition, geographical and climatic conditions, social and cultural stratification, as well as by differences in economic status.
Differential fertility therefore assumes a far more complex picture in India than anywhere in the world.
Ethnic, geographical, socio-cultural and economic differences give a four-fold pattern with many complicated interactions. It is essential therefore to study different population groups separately.
Just as Tagore sought to bring humanity closer through Visva-Bharati or his one-nest-world university at Santiniketan, Prasanta Chandra strove to use the ideal of humanism through statistics.
We owe a lot to the Indians who taught us to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Because demography is concerned with human affairs and human populations it is possible, in principle, to consider demography as a sub-field of many other subjects.
The spirit and outlook of 'Sankhya' will be universal, but its form and content must necessarily be, to some extent, regional. We shall keep the special needs of India in view without, however, restricting the scope of the journal in any way.
The study of modern statistical methods is in its infancy in our country, and we do not expect to be able to achieve immediate results. We shall be satisfied if we can help by our humble efforts to lay the foundations for future work.
