Jyotiprasad Medhi was a professor of statistics at

Gauhati University Gauhati University also known as GU, is a collegiate public state university located in Guwahati, Assam, India. It was established on 26 January 1948 under the provisions of an Act enacted by the Assam Legislative Assembly and is the oldest un ...

and Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology.

Work and education

Medhi started his schooling in

Dibrugarh Dibrugarh () is a city in the Indian state of Assam, located 435 kms east of the state capital Dispur. It serves as the headquarters of the Dibrugarh district in Upper Assam. Dibrugarh also serves as the headquarters of the Sonowal Kach ...

and in 1940 he passed matriculation from Dibrugarh Government High School. After matriculation, he did his graduate studies in

Cotton College, Guwahati Cotton University also known as CU, is a public state university (India), state university located in Guwahati, Assam, India. It was established in 2017 by the provisions of an Act from the Assam Legislative Assembly which merged Cotton Colleg ...

in 1946 and was a gold medalist in BSc with Honours in mathematics. There he received the Sudmerson Gold Medal and Rajanikant Barat Gold Medal. Medhi did his MSc in

Pure Mathematics Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications ...

from

Calcutta University The University of Calcutta, informally known as Calcutta University (), is a Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Kolkata, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate c ...

, and got the Debendra Nath Gangopadhaya Gold medal for record marks obtained and the Post graduate First class first gold medal in 1948. In 1952, he took a loan of ten thousand rupees from Govt of Assam and moved to England to pursue Master of

Statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

(MStat) from the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

and completed in 1954. He worked with M S Bartlett in the

in 1955 on the topic '

Time Series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...

Analysis'. Thereon Medhi moved to France to complete his DSc at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

in 1956 under the supervision of Robert Fortet, while

Georges Darmois Georges Darmois (24 June 1888 – 3 January 1960) was a French mathematician and statistician. He pioneered in the theory of sufficiency, in stellar statistics, and in factor analysis. He was also one of the first French mathematicians to teach ...

and Daniel Dugué served on his thesis examination committee. He had also taken a diploma in French Language with mention 'Honorable'. Its worthy to mention that he had written his doctoral thesis in

French Language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

. Medhi joined as a

lecturer Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

Cotton University Cotton University also known as CU, is a public state university located in Guwahati, Assam, India. It was established in 2017 by the provisions of an Act from the Assam Legislative Assembly which merged Cotton College State University and Cot ...

erstwhile

in 1948. However, in the same year Gauhati University was established and he was invited to work as

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

. Accepting the invitation, he joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics as a lecturer. In between his tenure, he had taken MS degree from England and DSc from Paris. Medhi returned to

where he became a professor and was the head of the department of

till he retired in 1985. Earlier in Gauhati University, both mathematics and statistics were in a common department, however, under the able leadership of Prof Medhi, statistics became a full-fledged individual department. In 1987, two years after retirement, he was entitled the honour of

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

at the same university and remained so until his death in 2017. Under his guidance, several students got doctoral degrees and

Tata Subba Rao Tata Subba Rao (1942 – 13 April 2018] was a professor of statistics in the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester. He gained his MA at Karnatak, his PhD from Gauhati University in 1966 under the guidance of Jyotiprasad Medhi, and DSc ...

is the first among them. From Southern India, Subba Rao had come to Assam to pursue his research under Prof Medhi and later he had joined

Manchester University The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

as a Professor. In 1979, he established the 'Population Research Centre' and served as a director. He played a prominent role in shaping the newly formed Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology, Assam, IASST by serving as director.

Publications

Medhi published many articles in peer reviewed international and national journals. He also published two books on

stochastic processes In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables in a probability space, where the index of the family often has the interpretation of time. Stoc ...

each with over 500 citations.

Awards and honours

The J Medhi memorial lecture is annually held in the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati at the Department of Mathematics. In 2016, Medhi was conferred an Honorary

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

DSc DSC or Dsc may refer to: Education * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dyal Sin ...

by Tezpur University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Medhi, Jyotiprasad 1924 births 2017 deaths Queueing theorists Indian statisticians 20th-century Indian mathematicians Cotton College, Guwahati alumni University of Calcutta alumni Alumni of the University of Manchester University of Paris alumni Academic staff of Gauhati University