Kantilal Vardichand "Kanti" Mardia (born 1935) is an Indian-British statistician specialising in

directional statistics Directional statistics (also circular statistics or spherical statistics) is the subdiscipline of statistics that deals with directions (unit vectors in Euclidean space, R''n''), axes (lines through the origin in R''n'') or rotations in R''n''. Mor ...

multivariate analysis Multivariate statistics is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable. Multivariate statistics concerns understanding the different aims and background of each of the dif ...

geostatistics Geostatistics is a branch of statistics focusing on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets. Developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations, it is currently applied in diverse disciplines including petro ...

, statistical

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

and

statistical shape analysis Statistical shape analysis is an analysis of the geometrical properties of some given set of shapes by statistical methods. For instance, it could be used to quantify differences between male and female gorilla skull shapes, normal and pathological ...

. He was born in

Sirohi Sirohi is a city, located in Sirohi district in southern Rajasthan state in western India. It is the administrative headquarters of Sirohi District and was formerly the capital of the princely state of Sirohi ruled by Deora Chauhan Rajput rul ...

, Rajasthan, India in a

Jain Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

family and now resides and works in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

. He is known for his series of tests of multivariate normality based measures of multivariate skewness and kurtosis as well as work on the statistical measures of shape.

Life and career

Mardia was educated at the

Ismail Yusuf College Ismail Yusuf College, is the fourth oldest college of Mumbai, India. ''"I Y college"'', as it is popularly known, is managed by Government of Maharashtra. It is the oldest college in North Mumbai. It was established in 1930 with a large donati ...

at the

University of Bombay The University of Mumbai is a collegiate, state-owned, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. Ratan Tata is the appointed ...

(BSc 1955, MSc in statistics 1957), the

University of Poona Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), formerly the University of Poona, is a collegiate public state university located in the city of Pune, India. It was established in 1949, and is spread over a campus in the neighbourhood of Ganeshk ...

(MSc in pure mathematics 1961), the

University of Rajasthan University of Rajasthan is a public and state university in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India and is one of the oldest universities in the state. It was set up on 8 January 1947 as the University of Rajputana and was given its current name in 1956. ...

(PhD 1965) and the

University of Newcastle Upon Tyne Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick univer ...

(PhD 1967, DSc 1973). He held academic positions at the

Institute of Science, Mumbai The Institute of Science (formerly known as the Royal Institute of Science (RIS)) is an institution of postgraduate education and research located in Mumbai, India. It is managed by the Government of Maharashtra and is currently clustered from ...

and the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hull ...

. Mardia was appointed professor of applied statistics and head of the Department of Statistics in the School of Mathematics at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

in 1973. He retired in 2000 with the title

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

professor and is currently senior research professor of applied statistics at

. He is also a long-term visiting professor at the University of Oxford, from March 2013, and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), from 2008. He was instrumental in founding the Centre of Medical Imaging Research (CoMIR) in the

, where he held the position of joint director. He was the driving force behind the exchange programs between Leeds and other scholarly centres such as the University of Granada, Spain, and the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

, Calcutta. He has written several scholarly books and edited conference proceedings and other special volumes. In 1973, Mardia founded the University of Leeds Annual Statistics Research Workshops (LASR) which have run for most years and he has edited all the proceedings. These workshops attract an international audience and focus on applied statistical topics especially those involving shape and images, and more recently,

. In 2003, he was awarded the Guy Medal in Silver by the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

. In 2013, he was awarded the

Wilks Memorial Award The Wilks Memorial Award is awarded by the American Statistical Association to recognize outstanding contributions to statistics. It was established in 1964 and is awarded yearly. It is named in memory of the statistician Samuel S. Wilks. The awa ...

by the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

. In 2019, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Indian Statistical Association. In 2020, he was awarded the Mahatma Gandhi Medal of Honour by the NRI Institute. In 2021, he received the OneJAIN Life Achievement Award from the Jain All-Party Parliamentary Group. The 40th Fisher Memorial Lecture was given by Professor Mardia on 18 November 2022 at the Oxford Mathematical Institute. He is a practicing Jain and strict vegetarian. His 1990 book ''The Scientific Foundations of Jainism'' introduced the Four Noble Truths of Jains. He is the founding and current chairman of the Yorkshire Jain Foundation. Mardia was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) in the

2023 New Year Honours The 2023 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebration ...

for services to statistical science.

Books

*''Families of Bivariate Distributions'' (1970) *''Multivariate Analysis'', coauthored with John T. Kent and John Bibby (1979) *''Directional Statistics'', coauthored with Peter Jupp, (1999) (first published under the title ''Statistics of Directional Data, 1972'') *''Bayesian Methods in Structural Bioinformatics'', co-edited with Thomas Hamelryck and Jesper Ferkinghoff-Borg (2012) *''Statistical Shape Analysis'', coauthored with Ian Dryden (2016) (first edition 1998) *''Living Jainism: An Ethical Science'', coauthored with Aidan Rankin (2013) *''The Scientific Foundations of Jainism'' (1990)

Mardia Prize

The Mardia Prize (founded by Kantilal Mardia) is awarded by the Royal Statistical Society. This award is given annually/biennially to support interdisciplinary workshops. The aim of these workshops is to bring together statisticians and other science communities who can help in developing new interdisciplinary area and maintain a sustained focus. The first award was inaugurated in 2016 (Topic: renewable natural resources management, food security, climate change and the illegal wildlife trade) with the second in 2018 (Topic: extreme weather research) and the third in 2019https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/4214-2019-mardia-prize-to-support-workshops-on-economics-of-mental-health (Topic: economics of mental health).

References

External links

Home page at Leeds University
by Fred Bookstein.
Yorkshire Jain FoundationIn Conversation with Prof. Kanti V. Mardia . . .
in Research Newsletter of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. February 2009. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mardia, Kanti Directional statistics Savitribai Phule Pune University alumni University of Rajasthan alumni University of Mumbai alumni Alumni of Newcastle University Academics of the University of Hull Academics of the University of Leeds Fellows of the American Statistical Association Living people 1935 births People from Sirohi district British Jains Spatial statisticians Indian emigrants to England Officers of the Order of the British Empire British statisticians Indian statisticians