Nobel Prize Nominator Sisir Kumar Mitra, F.R.S.: His Scientific Works in International Context

摘要

In 1997, David Banks, a statistician at Duke University, authored a provocative paper suggesting that geniuses tend to "clot inhomogeneously". This is certainly true in India, and particularly in Bengal, where we notice several great scientists were born in clusters. C.V. Raman (1888-1970)- the only Nobel Prize winner in physics from India, Sisir Kumar Mitra (1890-1963) -the father of ionospheric research in India, Meghnad Saha (1893-1956)- the pioneer of nuclear physics research in India, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893-1972) - the visionary who introduced statistics and its application in formulating science policies of India, and Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1972)- the discoverer of famous Bose-Einstein statistics, were all born within a span of about five years. (Another set of intellects were born about thirty years earlier-Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944), Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)-again within a period of five years.)