Das was born in
Puri, a city on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in
Bihar and Orissa Province,
British India. He was one of six siblings, and was educated in
Cuttack from grade 2 through the completion of his B.A. degree. He earned an Honors B.A. in
Psychology and
Philosophy from Ravenshaw College (now
Ravenshaw University) in
Cuttack, and an M.A. in Experimental Psychology from
Patna University, India. After two years as a lecturer in Psychology at
Utkal University, in 1955 he won a Government of India scholarship to study at the Institute of Psychiatry at the
University of London, supervised by
Hans Eysenck. He chose for his dissertation an investigation into the relationship between hypnosis, eyelid conditioning and reactive inhibition. After earning his Ph.D. in 1957, he returned to Utkal University where he was a Lecturer in Psychology, and then a Reader in Psychology, for five years. In 1963, he was awarded a
Kennedy Foundation Visiting Professorship at the Peabody College of
Vanderbilt University in
Nashville. After spending a year there, he moved on to
UCLA, where he spent a year as a visiting associate professor in Psychology before returning to Utkal University in 1965. Das moved to the
University of Alberta in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1968 as a University Research Professor at the Centre for the Study of Mental Retardation, established by
Donald Ewen Cameron in 1968. He became the third Director of the Centre in 1972 and continued to work at the Centre until 1994. He formally retired in 1995, and continued at the Centre as the Emeritus Director and an Emeritus Professor, still conducting research, as well as writing books and articles. The Centre was renamed in his honour in 1997. == Order of Canada ==