[1] Rana was born on 12 October 1954 in Sauri, a village in southern Midnapore, West Bengal, to parents Rajendra Prasad and Nakfuri Devi.
At school, Manindra Narayan Lahiri, a graduate from Calcutta and avid sky watcher, who introduced Rana to astronomy.
Rana joined the TIFR, Bombay, in 1977, where he began his research in astrophysics with Professor Jayant Vishnu Narlikar.
[4] In spite of non-cooperative health and recurrent problems with his pacemaker, Rana has left his mark in many branches of astrophysics and in amateur astronomy in India.
His project of measuring the diameter of the Sun during the total solar eclipse on 24 October 1995, involving a large team of young students, was a very challenging one.