Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was an Indian statistician born on June 29, 1893. He is best known for founding the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931, which played a crucial role in the development of statistics in India. Mahalanobis developed the Mahalanobis distance, a measure used in multivariate analysis, which helps in identifying similarities between different data points. Mahalanobis also contributed significantly to the planning of India's economy after independence. He was involved in the formulation of the Second Five-Year Plan, which emphasized the importance of industrialization and statistical methods in economic planning. His work laid the foundation for modern statistical practices in India.