Indian Statistical Institute - History

History

ISI's origin can be traced back to the Statistical Laboratory in Presidency College, Kolkata set up by Mahalanobis, who worked in the Physics Department of the college in 1920s. Mahalnanobis did his Tripos in Mathematics and Physics at University of Cambridge during 1913-15. During his stay at Cambridge, he came across Biometrica, journal of statistics founded by Karl Pearson. Since 1915, he taught physics at Presidency College, but his interest in statistics grew under the guidance of polymath Brajendranath Seal. Many colleagues of Mahalanobis took an interest in statistics and the group grew in the Statistical Laboratory. Considering the extensive application of Statistics in solving various problems in real life such as analyzing multivariate anthropometric data, usage of sample surveys as a method of data collection, meteorological research, crop yield estimation etc., this group, particularly, Mahalanobis and his younger colleagues S. S. Bose and H. C. Sinha felt the necessity of forming a specialized institute to facilitate research and learning of Statistics. On 17 December 1931 Mahalonobis held a meeting with Pramatha Nath Banerji (Minto Professor of Economics), Nikhil Ranjan Sen (Khaira Professor of Applied Mathematics), and Sir R. N. Mukherji. This meeting led to the establishment of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), which was formally registered on 28 April 1932, as a non-profit distributing learned society under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860. Later, the institute was registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act XXVI of 1961 amended in 1964. R. N. Mukherjee accepted the role of the President of ISI and held this position until his death in 1936. In 1953, ISI was relocated to a property owned by Professor Mahalanobis, named "Amrapali", in Baranagar, a locality in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

In 1931, Mahalanobis was the only person working for ISI, and he managed it with an annual expenditure of Rs. 250. It gradually grew with the pioneering work of a group of his colleagues including S. S. Bose, J. M. Sengupta, R. C. Bose, S. N. Roy, K. R. Nair, R. R. Bahadur, G. Kallianpur and D. B. Lahiri. Pitamber Pant, who had received training in statistics at the institute, went on to become a secretary to the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru and was a great source of help and support to the institute.

The institute started a training section in 1938. In due course, many of the early workers left the ISI for careers in the USA and with the Government of India or in industry and others came in. By the 1940s, the Indian Statistical Institute was internationally known and was taken as a model when the first institute of statistics was set up in the United States by Gertrude Cox — perhaps the only time an institute in a developing country was used as a model in a developed country.

As asked by the Government of India, in 1950, ISI designed and planned a comprehensive socio-economic national sample survey covering rural India. The organization named National Sample Survey (NSS) was founded in 1950 for conducting this survey. The field work was performed by the Directorate of NSS functioning under the Ministry of Finance, whereas the other tasks such as planning of the survey, training of field workers, review, data processing and tabulation were executed by ISI. In 1961, the Directorate of NSS started functioning under the Department of Statistics of Government of India, and later in 1971, the design and analysis wing of NSS was shifted from ISI to the Department of Statistics forming the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

J. B. S. Haldane joined the ISI as a research professor from August 1957, and stayed on until February 1961. He helped the ISI grow in biometrics. Haldane also played a key role in developing the structure and content of the courses offered by ISI.

Until 1959, ISI was associated with the University of Calcutta. By the 'The Indian Statistical Institute Act 1959' of the Parliament of India, amended in 1995, the ISI was declared an institute of national importance, and authorized to hold examinations and grant degrees and diplomas in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Economics, and in any other subject related to Statistics as identified by the Institute from time to time. ISI is a public university, as the same act also states that ISI would be funded by the Central Government of India.

ISI had by the 1960s started special service units in New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad to provide consultancy services to business, industry and governmental public service organisations in the areas of Statistical Process Control, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. Bangalore also had a Documentation Research & Training Centre. In early 1970s the Delhi and Bangalore units were converted to teaching centres. In 2008, ISI Chennai was upgraded to a teaching centre. In 2011, ISI added a new centre in Tezpur.