Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis purchased a plot of land with a one-storied building in early 1941 at Baranagore on 87 (now 204) Barrackpore Trunk Road. His plan was to renovate and extend the house, mainly for residential purposes. Rabindranath Tagore was a close personal friend and well-wisher of Mahalanobis. Tagore named the proposed house Amrapali after a classical Buddhist sanctuary. The renovation was complete in 1942, a year after the poet had died.
As soon as Amrapali was ready, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis moved there from Gupta Niwas, along with his wife, Rani. He placed at the disposal of the Indian Statistical Institute a few rooms of Amrapali. Consequently the centre of activities of the Institute moved from the premises of Presidency College, Kolkata, to Amrapali. It remained so till 1951, when the RTS Building (now known as the Main Building) was constructed.
Amrapali remained a meeting place of great minds across the world. Mahalanobis received here as guests R.A. Fisher, Harold Hotelling, Frank Yeates, Norbert Weiner, A.N. Kolmogorov, Herman Hold, J.B.S. Haldane, Jan Tribergen and many more. Some of these visitors stayed at the guest rooms of Amrapali. In 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru stayed for a few days as a guest of Mahalanobis in Amrapali.
Amrapali now houses the P.C. Mahalanobis Meuseum and Archives, where a permanent exhibition depicting the life works of Mahalanobis has been organised. The central office of the Statistical Quality Control & Operations Research Division and some offices of the Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit are also located in this building.
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