C.R. 劳1920—2023

早年经历

拉奥生于印度卡纳塔克邦，1943年于印度安得拉大学获得数学硕士学位、于加尔各答大学获得统计硕士学位。他于1945年证明了概率论中的克拉美–拉奥不等式。

学术生涯

在前往剑桥大学攻读博士学位之前，拉奥曾在印度统计研究所和剑桥的人类学博物馆工作。拉奥在1948年获得统计学博士学位，他的导师是罗纳德·艾尔默·费希尔。拉奥曾担任许多重要的职位，例如印度统计研究所总监，匹兹堡大学特聘教授，宾州州立大学多变量研究中心总监。在印度统计研究所任职的40多年中，拉奥培养出了多名数学领域的领袖。在拉奥的建议之下，亚太统计研究所在东京成立，以向在政府部门和行业中工作的统计学家提供培训。拉奥最著名的学术成果是克拉美-拉奥不等式和拉奥-布莱克维尔定理。他涉及的领域包括多变量分析，估计理论和微分几何。他是14本书的作者，并且发表过超过400篇论文。

Prof. Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao (10 September 1920 – 22 August 2023) was an Indian-American mathematician and statistician. He was professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and research professor at the University at Buffalo. Rao was honoured by numerous colloquia, honorary degrees, and festschrifts and was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 2002. The American Statistical Association has described him as "a living legend" whose work has influenced not just statistics, but has had far reaching implications for fields as varied as economics, genetics, anthropology, geology, national planning, demography, biometry, and medicine." The Times of India listed Rao as one of the top 10 Indian scientists of all time.

In 2023, Rao was awarded the International Prize in Statistics, an award often touted as the "statistics' equivalent of the Nobel Prize". Rao was also a Senior Policy and Statistics advisor for the Indian Heart Association non-profit focused on raising South Asian cardiovascular disease awareness.

Early life

C. R. Rao was the eighth of the ten children born to a Telugu family in Hoovina Hadagali, Bellary, Madras Presidency, Britain ruled India (now in Vijayanagara, Karnataka, India). His schooling was completed in Gudur, Nuzvid, Nandigama, and Visakhapatnam, all in the present state of 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, Cambridge, under R. A. Fisher in 1948, to which he added a DSc degree, also from Cambridge, in 1965.

Career

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.

As Head and later Director of the Research and Training School at the Indian Statistical Institute, India for a period of over 40 years, Rao developed research and training programs and produced several leaders in the field of Mathematics. On the basis of Rao's recommendation, the Asian Statistical Institute (ASI), now known as the Statistical Institute for Asia and Pacific, was established in Tokyo to provide training to statisticians working in government and industrial organisations.

Among his best-known discoveries are the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), Rao Distance, Rao's Score test, Rao's Quadratic Entropy, Cramér–Rao bound and the Rao–Blackwell theorem these are related to the quality of estimators. Majority of the publications were during his time period in Indian Statistical Institute in 60 years of his career. Other areas he worked in include multivariate analysis, estimation theory, and differential geometry. His other contributions include the Fisher–Rao theorem, Rao distance, and orthogonal arrays. He was the author of 15 books and authored over 400 journal publications.

Rao received 38 honorary doctoral degrees from universities in 19 countries around the world and numerous awards and medals for his contributions to statistics and science. He was a member of eight National Academies in India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy. Rao was awarded Santhi Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1963 and followed by Padma Bhushan in 1968. Rao was awarded the United States National Medal of Science, that nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research, in June 2002. He was given the India Science Award in 2010, the highest honour conferred by the government of India in a scientific domain. He was most recently honoured with his 38th honorary doctorate by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, on 26 July 2014 for "his contributions to the foundations of modern statistics through the introduction of concepts such as Cramér–Rao inequality, Rao–Blackwellization, Rao distance, Rao measure, and for introducing the idea of orthogonal arrays for the industry to design high-quality products."

Rao was the President of the International Statistical Institute, Institute of Mathematical Statistics (USA), and the International Biometric Society.

Death

Rao died in Buffalo, New York on 22 August 2023, aged 102.