News Releases March 2012

C.R.Rao, Padma Vibhushan, received three Honorary Doctorate degrees:

D.Sc. from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka in December 2011; D.Sc. from Karanatak University, Dharwad in January 2012; D.Litt (VACHASPATI) from International Sanskrit University, Tirupati in February 2012. These are his 34th, 35th and 36th of the honorary degrees he received from universities in 19 countries (10 in Europe, 3 in Asia, 2 in North America, 2 in South America one each from Africa and Australia) spanning 6 continents.

Dr. Rao was former Director of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, where he worked for 40 years before retiring at the mandatory retirement age of 60. He is the founder of the new institute, CRRAO AIMSCS in the campus of University of Hyderabad. At the age of 92, he is still active trying to develop the institute as an institute of national importance for advanced research in mathematics, statistics and computer science. He is currently Eberly Professor Emeritus at Penn State and Research Professor, University at Buffalo, USA, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Advisor of CRRAO AIMSCS (India). He started Statistics Olympiad program in 2009, the first in the world, to encourage the study of statistics and has plans to establish a museum of statistics for public education of statistics. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, of which special mention maybe made of, India Science award (the highest award for a scientist in India), National Medal of Science (the highest award for a scientist in USA), Guy Medal in Gold of Royal Statistical Society, UK (the highest award for a statistician in UK), Wilks Medal (the highest award for a statistician in USA), and Bhatnagar Award for a scientist in India.

He worked with Prof. P.C.Mahalanobis in establishing state statistical bureaus to make India one of the advanced countries in collection of official statistics. He initiated educational and Ph.D. programs in theoretical statistics, for the first time in India. His first batch of 50 Ph.D.’s he supervised includes well known statisticians D.Basu, R.G.Laha, V.S.Varadarajan, Abel Prize winner S.R.S. Varadhan, K.R.Parthasarathy, J.S.Rao and S.B.Rao.

Of his numerous international awards, mention may be made of his Fellowship of Royal Society, UK and membership of US National Science Academy. In a recent issue of SIGNIFICANCE, Vol 8, 175-178, Nov 2012, Julian Champkin, editor, mentioned, "C.R. Rao is a great name from the golden age of statistics. His work was done in India; his intellect shaped statistics worldwide".

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