Samarendra Kumar Mitra

Samarendra Kumar Mitra (1916-1998) was an Indian scientist born in Calcutta who studied chemistry and mathematics before working as a research physicist and joining the Indian Statistical Institute in 1950, where he founded its Computing Machines and Electronics Division. In 1953-54 he designed and built an electronic analog computer, among India first computers, capable of solving linear equations with ten variables, and he later led development of the ISIJU-1, India first indigenous second-generation digital computer, completed in 1964 through a collaboration between the Indian Statistical Institute and Jadavpur University. A 1949-50 UNESCO fellowship took him to Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and Cambridge University to study high-speed computing machines.