of mathematics at new york university and only indian ever, won the prestigious abel prize ( which is perhaps equivalent to a nobel prize ) in mathematics this year. professor p. c. mahalanobis and statistics as the statistics day is being celebrated in honour of the birth anniversary of ( late ) professor prasanta chandra mahalanobis, i thought a brief sketch of his life will be appropriate at this juncture. born on june 29 1893 in a well - to - do progressive brahmo family, he passed away on june 28, 1972. he graduated in physics from presidency college, kolkata and went on to study in cambridge in 1913 and in 1915 finished his tripos in natural science with a first class. his first encounter with statistics was also a chance - event, when his tutor macaulay drew his attention to some bound volumes of biometrika. he got so interested that he bought a complete set of biometrika volumes towards his journey back to india. mahalanobis set up the statistical laboratory in the presidency college sometime in the 1920s. his contribution to statistics is enormous. during the 1920s and until the mid1930s, all or nearly all the statistical work done in india, was done single - handedly by mahalanobis. the early statistical studies included analyses of data on stature of anglo - indians, meteorological data, rainfall data, data on soil conditions, etc. some of the findings of these early studies were of great impact in the control of floods, development of agriculture, etc., and led to the recognition of statistics as a key discipline. his passion and conviction was truly guided for the solutions of applied problems. his further work on anthropological data resulted in new methodology for classifying or distinguishing populations characterized by such measurements called mahalonobis d - square. another very important initiative undertaken by professor mahalonobis was the initiation of crop cutting surveys to estimate agricultural production in india, which was a novel idea of that time. these surveys have continued till today and continue to be important in the estimation of agricultural production. the indian statistical institute was founded in a small room in the presidency college as a society on 17 december, 1931. sankhya, the indian journal of statistics, was founded two years later. mahalanobis'influence was so ubiquitous that even students of physics began to take interest in statistics. later, several talented young scholars joined to form an active group of statisticians. mahalanobis continued to be the nucleus. theoretical research in statistics began to flourish

late starter. indeed, much of the development even in the united states came later. only britain had started earlier. this helped creation of an indian school of statistics with its own mix of theory and applications. the architect of modern statistical methods in the indian subcontinent was undoubtedly professor prasanta chandra mahalanobis. he was helped by a very distinguished group of scientists that included r. c. bose, s. n. roy c. r. rao, s. s. bose, k. r. nair, d. b. lahiri and many others. there were others like p. v. sukhatme, and v. g. panse who worked independently of mahalanobis. the history of statistics is basically a history of some of these persons as well as a history of institutions and interactions between persons and institutions. the institute around which all these development took place is none other than the indian statistical institute ( isi ), calcutta. looking back at the history, one observed that 1950s was inarguably the golden period of isi. besides, prof. mahalanobis and c. r. rao, the faculty of isi included r. r. bahadur, d. basu, g. kallianpur, d. b. lahiri, m. mukherjee, r. mukherjee and many other distinguished luminaries. some of them studied abroad and subsequently joined isi as a faculty. d. basu joined the isi as a student and later became a professor as well as the first dean of studies. d. b. lahiri was a self - taught mathematician, contributed significantly on sample survey methods. between them rao, bahadur, basu and kallianpur and a new group of brilliant students including k. r. parthasarathy, r. ranga rao, v. s. varadarajan, s. r. s. varadhan made fundamental contributions to probability and classical inference during this period which were as important as the earlier contributions of bose and roy to design of experiments and multivariate analysis. among the other earlier students of the institute who achieved international reputation are g. p. patil, t. n. srinivasan, r. g. laha, j. roy, sujit kumar mitra, d. k. roy choudhury, and others. i may also mention that s. r. s. varadhan, currently a professor