Meet Indian genius, grandson of a chemist, studied in Kolkata, he is called ‘Father of…

India has produced many brilliant minds who have changed the course of our understanding of various things. One such genius is  Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. He is best known for Mahalanobis distance a statistical measure. He was also a member of the first planning commission of free India. 

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was born on June 29, 1893, in Calcutta to a prominent Bengali Brahmin family. His grandfather Gurucharan was a chemist and was greatly inspired by Debendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath Tagore. Gurucharan was an active part of social movements at the time such as Brahmo Samaj. 

Mahalanobis did his schooling at Brahmo Boys School in Calcutta. For graduation, he secured admission to the Presidency College, which was affiliated with the University of Calcutta where his teaching faculty included renowned personalities such as Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray. 

Meghnad Saha was one-year junior to him and Subhas Chandra Bose was two years junior to him. After completing his graduation in 1912  with a BSc in Physics, PC Mahalanobis went to the University of London for higher education. 

He was greatly interested in statistics. He along with Pramatha Nath Banerji, Nikhil Ranjan Sen and Sir R N Mukherji established the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Baranagar which was formally registered in April 1932. PM Mahalanobis is known as the father of modern statistics. 

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