In 1915, against the backdrop of World War I, an Indian student at Cambridge found that his ship from England to India had been delayed. PC...
In 1915, against the backdrop of World War I, an Indian student at Cambridge found that his ship from England to India had been delayed. PC Mahalanobis spent some of his waiting time in the library of King’s College, where a tutor brought some statistics books to his notice, quite by chance. He would go on become the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute and a giant of the discipline. A quarter of a century later, in 1940, when World War II was raging, the spectacular journey of another statistical doyen began – as a last resort.
Nineteen-year-old Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao or CR Rao had stood first-class first in mathematics from Andhra University. However, due to administrative formalities, his application for a research scholarship was turned down. He then applied for a mathematician’s job at an army survey unit and went to Calcutta for an interview, but he was deemed too young for the job. As luck would have it, during his stay at a South Indian hotel in Calcutta, he met a man named Subramanian, who was employed in Bombay, but had been sent to Calcutta to be trained at the Indian Statistical Institute.
CR Rao applied for a one-year training programme...
