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Indian Statistical Institute

Research Institution in Kolkata, India

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Primary activities of ISI are research and training in statistics, development of theoretical statistics and its applications in various natural and social sciences. Key areas of research at ISI are statistics, mathematics, theoretical computer science, information science and mathematical economics.

Apart from the degree courses, ISI offers a few diploma and certificate courses, special diploma courses for international students via ISEC, and special courses in collaboration with CSO for training probationary officers of Indian Statistical Service (ISS).

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 the 1920s. During 1913–1915, he did his Tripos in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he came across Biometrika, a 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, applying sample surveys as a method of data collection, analyzing meteorological data, estimating crop yield 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 Rajendra Nath Mookerjee. 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. 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, which is now a municipality at the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

In 1931, Mahalanobis was the only person working at 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, Samarendra Kumar Mitra (Head of the Computing Machines and Electronics Laboratory and designer of India's first computer), J. M. Sengupta, Raj Chandra Bose, Samarendra Nath Roy, K. R. Nair, R. R. Bahadur, Gopinath Kallianpur, D. B. Lahiri, and Anil Kumar Gain. 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 United States or for positions in the public and private sectors in India. By the 1940s, the ISI 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 organisation 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, when he had a falling out with ISI Director P.C. Mahalanobis over Haldane's going on a much-publicized hunger strike to protest the United States pressuring U.S. National Science Fair winners Gary Botting and Susan Brown from attending an ISI banquet to which many prominent Indian scientists had been invited. Haldane 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 Indian Statistical Institute Act 1959' of the Parliament of India, amended in 1995, ISI was declared an institute of national importance, and was authorised to hold examinations and to 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 establishing 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. Additionally, Bangalore had a Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC). In the 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.

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