Professor Anil Kumar Gayen,
Post-Graduate Gold Medallist (CU),
Ph.D (Cantab.), FNA, FRSS.

Born: February 01, I919 and died on February 07, 1978.

Anil Kumar Gayen was a renowned scholar in the fields of Mathematics and Statistics. He was awarded Ph.D degree in 1950 in Statistics from the University of Cambridge. Professor Gayen obtained his Ph.D under the supervision of Prof. Henry Ellis Daniels, F.R.S., then President of the Royal Statistical Society, U.K. and the co-formulator of the famous Parry-Daniels Map. Gayen was Professor of Statistics and held the chair of the head of Mathematics Department at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur during 1954-1978.

Professor Gayen made significant contributions in Mathematics and Statistics. He contributed to linear statistical inference and the distribution of product-moment correlation coefficient. Gayen also studied the measurement of discriminating powers in psychometric and educational measurement problems. He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and Cambridge Philosophical Society and was President, Statistics Section of the Indian Science Congress in 1971. Recently, his name, along with his 12 Ph.D awardees, has been included in the website of Mathematics Genealogy Project launched by the North Dakota State University, USA in collaboration with the American Mathematical Society.

Apart from his academic contributions, Anil Kumar Gayen dedicated the later years of his life towards the establishment of Vidyasagar University as a non-traditional institution of higher education in the erstwhile Medinipur district of the West Bengal state in India. This university was named after the nineteenth century social reformer and educationist Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. Based on the recommendations of a citizen’s forum named Regional Educational Society led by Professor Anil Kumar Gayen, the University Grants Commission approved the establishment of Vidyasagar University in the erstwhile Midnapore district.

Finally, the Vidyasagar University Act was passed in 1981 in the West Bengal Assembly and received the assent of the Chancellor on the 24th June 1981, more than three years after the demise of Gayen. The First Vice-Chancellor of Vidyasagar University Professor Bhupesh Chandra Mukherjee rightly pointed out in his article in the Journal of Higher Education published by the UGC that Professor Anil Kumar Gayen’s vision was clearly reflected in the Vidyasagar University Act of 1981 wherein among others, it was stated that the “University shall have the power to make such academic studies as may contribute to the improvement of economic conditions and welfare of the people in general and the tribal people in particular.”[Author’s emphasis] (Vidyasagar University Act 1981 amended in 1997 and 2011).

Some of Professor Gayen’s internationally acclaimed works are:

• Gayen, A. K. (1949). The distribution of "Student's" t in random samples of any size drawn from nonnormal universes. Biometrika 36 353--369.
• Gayen, A. K. (1950). Significance of difference between the means of two nonnormal samples. Biometrika 37 399--408.
• Gayen, A. K. (1952). The inverse hypGayen, A. K. (1952). The inverse hyperbolic sine transformation on Student's t for nonnormal samples. Sankhyā 12 105--108.

Sources

• Compendium of INSA Fellows. 2012. 
  Accessed at : insaindia.org/Compendium of Fellows of INSA on 08.06.2012.
• Khejurir Sekal Ekal, 2009,  Edited by Swapan Kumar Mondal, Netaji Patha Chakra, Purba Medinipur.
• E-mail dated 11.06.2012 from Dr. Kaushik Bose, Ph.D (Cantab.).
• Mukherjee, B.C., 1987-88, “Vidyasagar University: Its Objectives and character”.
• Journal of Higher Education 1987-88, Vol.13 Nos. 1-3.pp. 125-126.
• North Dakota State University in Collaboration with American Mathematical Society, “Anil Kumar Gayen in Mathematics Genealogy Project”.
• Accessed at: genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=151546 on 08.06.2012.