Anil Kumar Gain | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1919-02-01)1 February 1919 |
| Died | 7 February 1978(1978-02-07) (aged 59) Kolkata, India |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient Vidyasagar University |
| Awards | FRSS FCPS |
| Fields | Mathematics and Statistics |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge University of Calcutta Presidency College, Calcutta/Rajabazar Science College Indian Statistical Institute Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur |
| Doctoral advisor | Henry Ellis Daniels |
Anil Kumar GainFRSSFCPS (1 February 1919 – 7 February 1978) (also speltAnil Kumar Gayen) was anIndian mathematician and statistician who is best known for his works on thePearson product-moment correlation coefficient in the field ofapplied statistics, with his colleagueRonald Fisher. He received his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Cambridge under the supervision ofHenry Ellis Daniels, who was the then President of theRoyal Statistical Society. He was honoured as aFellow of the Royal Statistical Society and theCambridge Philosophical Society.[2]
Gain was the president of the statistics section of theIndian Science Congress Association, as well as the head of the Department of Mathematics at theIndian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He later went on to foundVidyasagar University, naming it after the famous social reformer of theBengali Renaissance,Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.[3]
Anil Kumar Gain was born in a poorBengaliMahishya family of a village named Lakkhi inPurba Medinipur,West Bengal, to Jibankrishna Gain and Panchami Devi.[4] His father having died in his childhood, he and his siblings were brought up by his widowed mother under economic hardship. He started his education in an informal local school and was admitted to a formal school when he was eight. In his schooldays, he showed particular interest inEnglish andmathematics, subjects he was primarily taught by his mother. Upon finishing school, he travelled toKolkata to study mathematics fromSurendranath College, followed by a master's degree inapplied mathematics from theRajabazar Science College,University of Calcutta. He was declared the University Gold Medalist for the year 1943.[5]
After briefly teaching atPresidency College andBengal Engineering College, Gain married Krishna Chongdar, the daughter of a famous and wealthy Bengali businessman. He travelled toEngland in 1947, to pursue his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Cambridge inmathematical statistics – only to complete it in the year 1950. It was there that he met the famousHenry Ellis Daniels, under whose supervision he wrote most of his papers. He also befriendedSir Ronald Fisher there, and spent much of his time working with him in the field of applied statistics.
After returning to India, he started teaching at theIndian Statistical Institute as well as theUniversity of Calcutta, and finally joined theIndian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he spent most of his remaining career. During his years at Kharagpur, he began to work on educational projects such as theNational Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to reform the education sector in Bengal. This interest in revolutionizing education eventually led to the inception of Vidyasagar University,[6] which he founded with the vision of having a non-traditional teaching and learning environment at the University level.[4] The University was finally established by theUniversity Grants Commission (India) under the Vidyasagar University Act of 1981.[7]
Due to his efforts to revolutionise education in Bengal, he became a key figure in the latter half of theBengali Renaissance, as well as a renowned scholar and academic. In 2012, Vidyasagar University announced the establishment of theAnil Kumar Gain Memorial Lecture, in honour of his contributions to the university, and to Bengal as a whole.[8] On 1 February 2019, Dr.Abhijit Guha, Former Professor of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University delivered the Anil Gayen Birth Centenary Memorial Lecture.[9][10][11] An elaborate version of the lecture was published in South Asian Anthropologist.[12]
He died a week after his birthday, on 7 February 1978, of natural causes at his residence in Kolkata, India. His descendants still live in Kolkata, as well as abroad.[13]
