Sujit Kumar Mitra was born on January 23, 1932, in Calcutta, India.
He earned his B.Sc. degree in statistics from Presidency College, Calcutta, in
1949, an M.Sc. degree in statistics from Calcutta University in 1951 and a
Ph.D. degree in statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in 1956, under the guidance of Professor S. N. Roy. He has made pioneering
contributions in many areas of statistics and mathematics--including survey
sampling, linear models, design of experiments, goodness-of-fit tests and
linear algebra. He has been particularly credited for path-breaking
contributions in the area of generalized inverses of matrices, culminating in a
jointly authored landmark book with Professor C. R. Rao (published in 1971). He
was Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), both in Calcutta and
Delhi, for almost 40 years. He has held visiting positions at Indiana
University, Purdue University, University of Texas at Dallas, and Keio
University, Japan. He retired from ISI in January 1992 and is currently
Professor Emeritus. Unfortunately, he contracted Parkinson's disease in 1978.
Despite an uphill battle against constant physical discomfort, he has continued
as a leading contributor in many directions of mathematics and statistics. He
is well known for his zest in attacking and solving some of the most difficult
problems in linear algebra. He has earned many awards, honors and titles,
including Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and of the Indian
Academy of Science. He was also elected President of the Statistics Section of
the Indian Science Congress in 1988. He has been associated with many journals,
including Sankhyā, and has edited or coedited several special
volumes.