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Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao or CR Rao, a professor whose work more than 75 years ago, continues to exert a profound influence on science, has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics. Rao, who is now 102, will receive the prize, which comes with a $80,000 award, this July at the biennial International Statistical Institute World Statistics Congress in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Currently a professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the University at Buffalo, Rao has been a recipient of Padma Bhushan by the Indian Government (1968) and Padma Vibhushan in 2001.
“In awarding this prize, we celebrate the monumental work by C R Rao that not only revolutionized statistical thinking in its time but also continues to exert enormous influence on human understanding of science across a wide spectrum of disciplines,” said Guy Nason, chair of the International Prize in Statistics Foundation.
In his remarkable 1945 paper published in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, Rao demonstrated 3 fundamental results that paved the way for the modern field of statistics and provided statistical tools heavily used in science today, the Foundation said.
Rao, born to a Telugu family in Hadagali, Karnataka, completed his schooling in Andhra Pradesh. He received an MSc in mathematics from Andhra University and an MA in statistics from Calcutta University in 1943. He obtained a PhD degree at King’s College at Cambridge University. He added a DSc degree, also from Cambridge, in 1965. Rao first worked at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Anthropological Museum in Cambridge.
Later he held several important positions, as the Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor and National Professor in India, University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Eberly Professor and Chair of Statistics and Director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis at Pennsylvania State University.
The International Prize in Statistics is awarded every two years by a collaboration among 5 leading international statistics organizations.
The prize recognizes a major achievement by an individual or team in the statistics field, particularly an achievement of powerful and original ideas that have led to practical applications and breakthroughs in other disciplines.
The prize is modeled after the Nobel prizes, Abel Prize, Fields Medal and Turing Award.
