“As in the case of my earlier experiences in China and Mexico, so in my Indian trip my motive was more than restlessness or idle curiosity. More and more Indian authors are publishing in our scientific journals, and we need the Orient more and more to supplement a West which is showing the intellectual and moral enfeeblement following two World Wars.” 

- Norbert Wiener, I Am a Mathematician, MIT Press, p.339, 15 August 1964

Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the father of the statistical movement in India, founded the Indian Statistical Institute [ISI] in 1931, initially at the Presidency College, Calcutta, to carry on research in the theory and applications of statistics in India. The ISI was the first institute of its kind anywhere in the world devoted mainly to the study of statistics. For seven months in late 1955, Norbert Wiener worked at the ISI at the invitation of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Mahalanobis visualised statistics as a technology applicable in diverse fields of the natural and social sciences and believed that statistics could grow well only in an environment where active quantitative research in its various domains of application went on side by side with research in statistical theory and methodology. 

During Norbert Wiener’s visit to ISI, Gopinath Kallianpur received training from him in the field of prediction theory for which he expresses his “profound scientific debt” to Wiener. Wiener managed to secure a two-year leave for Kallianpur from ISI to facilitate their long-term collaboration in the area of nonlinear prediction theory. However, this project did not materialize as Kallianpur suffered a prolonged illness soon after reaching the US. Nevertheless, he notes, even though his work on nonlinear filtering theory (for which he is well known) began as a collaboration with C. Striebel at the University of Minnesota, motivation for it came from Wiener. Kallianpur later returned to ISI in 1976 to become the first Director under its new Memorandum of Association. Thanks to his efforts, the Institute’s Bengaluru campus was established.

In 1990, P.R. Masani wrote a biography of Norbert Wiener that not only depicts Wiener the mathematician, but also describes his personality to some extent, detailing his interests in many other fields such as cybernetics, economics, and the philosophy of religion. Cybernetics, an inter- scientific discipline concerned with “communication and control in the animal and the machine” (as defined by Wiener) interested Masani, and he published papers in this area. Both Wiener and Masani had a much broader perspective on cybernetics which even included the philosophy of scientific methodology, rather than the narrow approach of machine learning which many take it to be.

Both Gopinath Kallianpur and P.R Masani are ranked in the top five statisticians in India.

Norbert Wiener lectured in India for seven weeks in 1953 at:

• Atomic Energy Institute, Bombay
• Indian Academy of Sciences, Ahmedabad
• National Chemical Laboratory, Pune
• All India Science Congress, Hyderabad
• Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore
• Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay
• Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta
• National Physical Laboratory, Delhi
  
  

Since 2010, the Computer Society of India [CSI], the IEEE India Council and other sister Institutions have been organizing India events to support the series of conferences on Norbert Wiener by the IEEE SSIT. We are thankful to Devi Ahilya Viswavidyalaya, Indore; Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata; Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad; CR Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Hyderabad; Indian Institute of Science, Benguluru; Central University of Rajasthan, Kishengarh, Rajasthan; and, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Anna University has been taking the lead in all the events in this series through fostering research in the area of “Cyber Physical Systems.” 

We thank the Board of Governors of IEEE SSIT for fully sponsoring the 3rd 21st Century Norbert Wiener Conference scheduled at the CEG Campus, Anna University between 23 – 26 July 2020. This conference is a part of the 225 years celebrations of the CEG Campus of Anna University. 

Please visit the Conference Website

Other Relevant Links:

https://www.annauniv.edu/pdf/21CW2020_Brochure_09Oct2019.pdf

https://technologyandsociety.org/event/ieee-3rd-conference-on-nobert-wiener-in-the-21st-century/

http://ieeecs-madras.managedbiz.com/icnl/19q3/p57.pdf

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