Eternal India Encyclopedia

seats. This enhanced his position and popularity as a successful election manager. Became Minister for Revenue and Jails in the Congress Ministry that was formed after the elections. He was the most accessible minister, always generous in helping those with problems. Many students completed their studies with his help and many unemployed persons got jobs through him. In the UP Congress Ministry formed in April 1946 Rafi Ahmad was Home Minister. As Communications Minister in the Union Cabinet after Independence he proved to be successful and competent, introducing innovations like the Night Air Mail service, the All-up Air Mail service, and Own Your Own Telephone scheme. He introduced the "inland letter", a weekly holiday for postmen on Sunday and laid the foundation-stone for the Indian Telephone Industries near Bangalore. He resigned from the Union Cabinet and the Congress in August, 1951 over his ideological differences with P.D. Tandon, the Congress President, but rejoined in October 1951 in response to a call from Nehru to all who had left the party to rejoin it. He became Union Food Minister in 1952 at a time when the food position was critical because of drought. After studying the food situation at first hand by visiting different parts of the country he concluded that the food situation was not so hopeless as it appeared. He abolished rationing and'removed all controls on food. He turned a situation of scarcity into one of self-sufficiency. He died on October 24,1954 after a heart attack. Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) The only physicist whose name is linked wiith Einstein in all the textbooks of physics, SatyendraNath Bose was born on January 1, 1894. After obtaining his M.Sc. from Calcutta University in 1915 he became Lecturer in Calcutta University in 1916 and was appointed Reader in Dacca University in 1921. In 1924 he formulated with Einstein the Bose-Einstein law of quantum mechanics which assumes that any number of identical particles may occupy the same energy level. (The other statistical method is called the Fermi-Dirac statistics). There are thus two statistical patterns that assemblies of elementary particles follow which is the basis for their division into Bosuns and Fermions. Particles that obey the Bose-Einstein statistics are called Bosuns after Bose. He was a co-worker of Madame Curie from 1924-25 at her laboratory in Paris and worked with Einstein from 1925- 26. He was a member of Parliament (Rajya

the Honorary Secretary. The next contribution of Mahalanobis was in the field of large-scale Sample Surveys leading to the inauguration in 1950 of the National Sample Survey, the largest Sample Survey of its kind in the world. Mahalanobis was the architect of the Second Five-Year Plan. He prepared a Draft Plan- Frame which was accepted as the basis for the formulation of the Second Five-Year Plan which had a new approach. Unlike the First Plan where the emphasis was on the development of agriculture, Mahalanobis suggested that emphasis should be laid in the Second Plan on the rapid development of basic heavy industries. He founded the Journal of statistics - Sankhya- which is the only scientific journal in India with a worldwide reputation. Rail Ahmad Kidwai (1894-1954) Rafi Ahmad Kidwai was bom on February 18,1894 in a middle class family at Masauli in Barabanki District of Uttar Pradesh. His father Imtiaz Ali was a Government servant. Since he had to move from place to place because of transfers, Rafi Ahmad was looked after by his uncle Vilayat Ali who was anti- British, an advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity and stood for closer ties between the Congress and the Muslim League. Young Rafi Ahmad imbibed from his uncle his intense feeling of nationalism. After his matriculation, he joined the MAO college at Aligarh in 1916. It was here that he became an efficient organiser of election campaigns. He took special interest in the activities of the college union, putting up and supporting candidates who were persona non grata with the college authorities but who were known for their anti-British and nationalistic views. Also as the senior food monitor he was successful in improving the quality of food in the students' hostel. After passing his BA he joined the LLB at Aligarh but could not complete it. He had become a member of the Congress and the Khilafat organisations in 1920 and left his studies one month before the commencement of the LLB examination to participate in the Non-co- operation movement. He was arrested and imprisoned in Lucknow Jail where he met Jawaharlal and Motilal Nehru who were among the inmates. He joined the Swaraj Party. Resigned from the Central Assembly in 1930 when Gandhi started the Civil Disobedience Movement. It was mainly due to his efforts that the movement was successful in Uttar Pradesh. In the 1937 elections he was the chief organiser of the Congress campaign in UP. The Congress won 134 out of 228

Department and he went to Allahabad University. In 1938 Saha returned to the Calcutta University as Palit Professor and Head of the Department of Physics. He founded the Institute of Nuclear Physics which now carries his name. In 1952 he was elected to the Lok Sabha as an independent candidate with the help of the leftist parties. From 1952 till his death in 1956 he was an active parliamentarian interesting himself in diverse subjects like planning, river control and states' reorganisation. He was interested in the reform of the Indian Calendar and in 1952 headed the Calendar Reform Committee. P.C. Mahalanobis was born on June 29, 1893 in Calcutta. He had his early education at the Brahmo Boys School and passed the Bachelor of Science examination with Honours in Physics in 1912 from the Presidency College, Calcutta. He entered King's College, Cambridge in 1913 to study physics. Here he became acquainted with Ramanujan the great mathematician, who was in Trinity College. He became interested in statistics when his tutor in Cambridge showed him some new bound volumes of the journal Biometrika. He left England for India in 1915 with the intention of returning to continue his research in physics but decided to stay on in India when he was offered the post of Assistant Professor of Physics in the Presidency College. He became Professor and Head of the Department of Physics. He was Principal of the College in 1945 till his retirement in 1948. In the meantime he laid the foundation of statistics in India. Statistics as a separate discipline was not then known anywhere in the world. Mahalanobis formed the nucleus of the Stastical Laboratory in a portion of the Physics Department of the Presidency College. His first work of statistical analysis was analysis of examination data by statistical methods which he was asked to carry out by Bajendranath Seal, then Professor of Philosophy in Calcutta University, who had been appointed Chairman of a Committee to inquire into the examination system. His first paper on statistics was "The Statistical Analysis of Anglo - Indian structure" based on the anthropological measurements of 200 Anglo- Indians. He undertook a statistical study of meteorological problems. He was appointed metrorologist in the Alipore Observatory in Calcutta. The Indian Statistical Institute was established in 1931 with R.N. Mukerjee, the eminent industrialist as president and Mahalanobis as Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893-1973)