About Mensa Kolkata

Mensa Kolkata - The Kolkata Chapter of the International High IQ Soceity

Mensa in India
Mensa was founded in 1946. Kolkata (then known as Calcutta) saw the birth of Mensa in India. 'Indian Mensa' got started in 1965 with Mr. S.M. Bilaney of Bombay as the Founder-Chairman, Mr. A. Das of Kolkata as the Founder-Secretary and Mr. T.S. Ramakrishnan of Madras as the Founder-Treasurer. The Mensa office and the majority of the members were then in Kolkata. By 1970 there were about 100 Mensans in India. After the Kolkata local group lost steam by 1973, the headquarters of Indian Mensa was shifted to Pune with the new name 'Mensa India' and it is still located in the Jnyana Probodinee school for intelligent children founded by Dr. V.V. Pendse. You can visit the Mensa India site here for more details.
Mensa in Kolkata
Kolkata is said to be the cultural capital of India and home of the Bengalis. Mensa Kolkata was started up in 2001 by Mr Amitananda Das. Since then, the Kolkata chapter of Mensa has grown fast and now has 180 members, till date. Eminent Mensa Kolkatans include

Prof. Ajit Pal, Head, Dept. of Computer Science, IIT Kharapur
Prof. Ashok Thakur, Pro-VC, West Bengal University of Technology. He did his Ph.D. on DNA of viruses. Later on, as the director of Computer Centre, Calcutta University he computerised the examination system for 300,000 students.
Dr. Raghu Raghavan. He designed a CCD sensor for the Space Shuttle. He also led the team that designed the flight-control computer of a Lockheed missile. Now he is the co-founder of a start-up in Baltimore that is developing technology for computer simulation of the human brain for medical applications.
Mr. Prasad Ray, Principal Secretary, Govt. of West Bengal.

Other Mensas in India
Upto 2000 only Pune and Mumbai had active local Mensa groups in India. From 2001 onwards, the Bangalore and Kolkata groups have become active and are growing fast. There are also a few members each in Nasik, Baroda, Delhi, Jaipur, Kharagpur and Chennai. The total membership in India is 1600.

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