Correct Answer :   C.R. Rao

The 2023 International Prize in Statistics, which is regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in statistics, has been awarded to Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, an Indian-American statistician.

The prize, established in 2016, is presented once every two years to an individual or team that has made significant contributions to science, technology, and human welfare through the use of statistics.

The award is given out by a collaboration of five major international statistics organizations and recognizes major accomplishments by an individual or team. Rao will be honored with the prize, which carries an $80,000 cash award, at the International Statistical Institute World Statistics Congress in Ottawa, Canada, in July.

What was Rao’s 1945 paper about?

* Rao’s groundbreaking paper, ‘Information and accuracy attainable in the estimation of statistical parameters’, was published in 1945 in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, a journal that is otherwise not well known to the statistics community.

* The paper was subsequently included in the book Breakthroughs in Statistics, 1890-1990. This was an impressive achievement given Rao was only 25 at the time and had just completed his master’s degree in statistics two years prior.

About the C.R. Rao

* Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, born in Karnataka in 1920, is an Emeritus Eberly professor in the statistics department at Pennsylvania State University. He played a significant role in establishing the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata and has been associated with the institute since 1941. Rao holds PhD and ScD degrees from Cambridge University.

* In addition to being awarded the Padma Bhusan in 1968 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001, Rao was the recipient of the SS Bhatnagar Prize in 1963 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1967. He also received the Wilks Medal of the American Statistical Association in 1979 and the US National Medal of Science in 2002.

* Throughout his career, Rao has held various positions such as 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 the Pennsylvania State University.