Renowned Indian-American mathematician and statistician Professor Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao passed away at the age of 102 on Tuesday, August 22. He was awarded the International Prize in Statistics, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in July 2023. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1968 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001. A biennial national award in statistics known as the 'The Professor CR Rao' award was also instituted in India.
"In awarding this prize, we celebrate the monumental work by CR Rao that not only revolutionised 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 a statement.
Among his significant work, Prof Rao demonstrated three fundamental results that paved the way for the modern field of statistics and provided statistical tools heavily used in science today in his 1945 paper published in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society. Combined, these results help scientists more efficiently extract information from data.
Born in Hadagalli in Karnataka in 1920, he was the eighth child born in a family of six brothers and four sisters. He started working with the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta in 1943 as a research scholar. He secured an MSc in Mathematics at Andhra University in 1941, an MA in statistics from Calcutta University in 1943 and a PhD degree at King's College in Cambridge University in 1948.
Cambridge University awarded him the prestigious ScD degree in 1965, and he has received 31 Honorary Doctoral degrees from universities in 18 countries. In India, under the direction of PC Mahalanobis, Rao worked to set up statistical bureaus in different states and developed a network of statistical agencies at the district level for collecting data.
In his honour, the Pennsylvania State University has established a CR and Bhargavi Rao Prize in Statistics.
The first International Prize in Statistics was awarded in 2017 to David R Cox for the development of the Cox proportional hazards model, which allows researchers to investigate patient survival rates in complex studies.
Awarded biennially at the ISI World Statistics Congress, the International Prize in Statistics aims to enhance public understanding of the depth and scope of statistics.
(With IANS inputs)