The Mahalanobis International Award is sponsored by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India. The award recognizes an individual for lifetime achievements in statistics in a low and middle income country or region. It is expected that the award will have the potential to attract, inspire and motivate statisticians across the developing world to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their contributions to the cause of promotion and development of statistics and its applications. The award is presented biennially during the ISI World Statistics Congress.

This initiative by the Government of India serves the dual purpose of honouring Professor P. C. Mahalanobis for his lifetime contributions and achievements in Statistics, and recognising and stimulating progress in Statistics in low and middle income countries/regions.

The achievements of the candidate will be considered under three main criteria and reflecting the spirit of Mahalanobis’s lifetime work:

• Academic leadership for low and middle income countries/regions;
• Professional and official leadership for low and middle income countries/regions and
• Inspiration and capacity-building within low and middle income countries/regions.

Some examples of contributions are:

• Innovative and concrete contributions to some field of application such as agriculture, economic development, education, health, industry, etc.;
• Statistical capacity building at a national or regional level;
• Improvements of national or regional statistical systems and/or infrastructure;
• Enrichment of statistical methodology.

Professor P.C. Mahalanobis

P.C. Mahalanobis (1893-1972) was a highly distinguished statistician who made extensive contributions to methodology, applications, statistical development, and public policy.

He founded the Indian Statistical Institute and served as an advisor to the Government of India.

Awarded biennially at the ISI World Statistics Congress, the International Prize in Statistics is stewarded and managed by a foundation comprising representatives of the five major statistical organizations working cooperatively to develop this prestigious award: the American Statistical Association; Institute of Mathematical Statistics; International Biometric Society; International Statistical Institute; and Royal Statistical Society.

C.R. Rao, a professor whose work more than 75 years ago continues to exert a profound influence on science, has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics.

The competition was launched in 2018 with the aim to promote research, encourage spatial thinking and Inspire curiosity about statistical spatial analysis, geographic patterns, and geocomputing. The competition is sponsored by Esri and ISI. Prizes are awarded to first, second and third-place participants. The awards ceremony takes place during the ISI World Statistics Congress.

The Karl Pearson Prize was formerly named after one of the Founders of statistical science, whose many contributions include the chi-square test for goodness of fit, the principal component method of dimension reduction, and the method of moments for statistical estimation.

On the other hand, Pearson was an active eugenics proponent. While Pearson’s eugenic ideas are not surprising for his time, we reject them today, as we reject all discriminatory ideas. In coherence with ISI principles, we find it inappropriate to keep using Karl Pearson’s name in association with prizes, lectures and other awards. Therefore it was decided to rename the Prize and honor the many Founders of Statistics with this Prize.