Established in 1908 by Sir Asutosh Mukherjee — the then vice-chancellor of Calcutta University — with 90 foundation members, the main aim of the society was to make mathematics popular among students.

But till now, it is still struggling with paucity of funds and has an obscure address in Salt Lake.

On Saturday, three vice-chancellors from newly-formed universities in the state, Asoke Ranjan Thakur of the West Bengal State University, Sabyasanchchi Sengupta of West Bengal University of Technology and Syed Shamshul Islam of Aliah University, were present at the society to attend the celebrations. The others who attended the celebrations were a few retired professors.

The vice-chancellors argued that technological developments in the country will fail to make progress if proper attention is not paid to mathematics, since the subject forms the core of technological developments.

“No student who is good in physics and mathematics take up the subjects at graduation, as they know it will not further their careers. They will make no contribution to the society,” said Sengupta.

The society, which is facing severe financial crisis, collects money by selling its journals and providing training to students preparing for various competitive examinations.

Occasional help from the state and the Central governments have not proved much for the institute.

The Society has established exchange relations with 125 foreign institutions and 20 Indian institutions under the Journal Exchange Programme.

The library of the Society houses around 20,000 journals and research papers of the likes of Satyendranath Bose, Megnad Saha, C V Raman, Ganesh Prasad, W H Hardy and many others.

“The Society has five to six employees but they are not recognised by the government. The reading room cannot accommodate more than 10 people and we have more than 500 members,” said B K Lahiri, former chairman of the Society.

“Though the Higher Education Department of the state, in its annual report, describes the Society as a centre for international development, the institute does not have a corpus fund of its own,” said Prof M R Adhikari, secretary of the Society.