Mahamahopadhaya Chandrasekhar Simha Samanta Harichandan Mohapatra, also known as Pathani Samanta, is an astronomer of the rank of Aryabhatta, Varahamihira, Brahmagupta, & Bhaskaracharya.

He was born in 1835 A.D. in the Princely State of Khandapada in Orissa. Away from the English education, he taught himself Sanskrit and attained scholarship in traditional Indian Astronomy. He fabricated ingenious instruments out of wooden sticks & bamboo chips and attained great accuracy in measurement.

His Scientific investigations have been recorded in his astronomical treatise The Siddhant Darpan composed in Sanskrit. This work was highly acclaimed even by the Western, Press in 1899. The title of Mahamahopadhyaya was given to him by the British Government in 1893 in recognition of his contribution to Astronomy. Samanta Chandra Sekhara passed away in 1904. Even today, most of the Oriya almanacs attribute their calculations to Samanta's prescriptions.