Founded by Professor P.C. Mahalanobis in Calcutta in 1931, the institute gained the status of an Institution of National Importance by an act of the Indian Parliament in 1959.

Teaching activities are  undertaken mainly in Calcutta and the two centers in Delhi and Bangalore.  Offices of the Institute located in several other cities in India are primarily engaged in projects and consultancy in Statistical Quality Control and Operations Research.

Main campus

The 30-acre Calcutta campus of the Indian Statistical Institute is located on the Barrackpore Trunk Road (B.T. Road). The two sections of the campus - the office complex and the residential complex - are separated by a public road.

The principal buildings in the office complex are the Main Building, the Geology Building, the Library Building, the Administration Building and the Amrapali.

The residential campus includes, apart from several staff quarters, the Guest House, the Medical Welfare Unit, the Boys' Hostel, the Research Scholars' and ISEC hostel, the Ladies hostel, and parts of several service units.

The Central Library at Calcutta has over 200,000 volumes of books and journals. It receives about one thousand scientific and technical journals annually. The library has developed a separate collection of books and journals in Mathematics and Statistics known as Eastern Regional Centre of  NBHM collection, out of the grants from the National Board of Higher Mathematics.

(compiled from The IIMC official website)