Well-known Indian-American mathematician and statistician, Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao has been selected for the 2023 International Prize in Statistics, the field’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. C R Rao, who is currently 102 years old, will receive the honour worth $80,000 in July during the biennial World Statistics Congress of the International Statistical Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Guy Nason, chair of the International Prize in Statistics Foundation acknowledged the significant contributions made by Rao in the field of statistics and its applications in various areas, including medical research.
In his remarkable 1945 paper published in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, Rao demonstrated three fundamental results that paved the way for the modern field of statistics and provided statistical tools heavily used in science today.
Rao was born in Hadagali, Karnataka, to a Telugu family. In 1943, he earned an MA in statistics from Calcutta University and an MSc in mathematics from Andhra University. In King’s College at Cambridge University, he earned a Doctorate. In 1965, he added a DSc degree from Cambridge. The Indian government conferred on him the titles of Padma Bhushan in 1968 and Padma Vibhushan in 2001.
