P.C. Mahalanobis

P.C. Mahalanobis (born June 29, 1893, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died June 28, 1972, Calcutta) was an Indian statistician who devised the Mahalanobis distance and was instrumental in formulating India’s strategy for industrialization in the Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61).

Born to an academically oriented family, Mahalanobis pursued his early education in Calcutta (now Kolkata). After graduating with honours in physics from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1912, he moved to England to study physics and mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Just before Mahalanobis left the university in 1915, he was introduced to statistics by one of his tutors. When he returned to India, he accepted a temporary position teaching physics at Presidency College, and he became a professor of physics there in 1922. However, his interest in statistics had evolved into a serious academic pursuit, and he applied statistical methods to problems in anthropology, meteorology, and biology. On December 17, 1931, he established the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta.

Mahalanobis devised a measure of comparison between two data sets that is now known as the Mahalanobis distance. He introduced innovative techniques for conducting large-scale sample surveys and calculated acreages and crop yields by using the method of random sampling. He devised a statistical method called fractile graphical analysis, which could be used to compare the socioeconomic conditions of different groups of people. He also applied statistics to economic planning for flood control.

With the objective of providing comprehensive socioeconomic statistics, Mahalanobis established the National Sample Survey in 1950 and also set up the Central Statistical Organization to coordinate statistical activities in India. He was also a member of the Planning Commission of India from 1955 to 1967. The Planning Commission’s Second Five-Year Plan encouraged the development of heavy industry in India and relied on Mahalanobis’s mathematical description of the Indian economy, which later became known as the Mahalanobis model.

Mahalanobis held several national and international portfolios. He served as the chairman of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Sampling from 1947 to 1951 and was appointed the honorary statistical adviser to the government of India in 1949. For his pioneering work, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, one of India’s highest honours, by the Indian government in 1968.