CR Rao has made fundamental contributions in mathematical statistics, particularly in the areas of robust estimation, characterizations of probability distributions, and the bootstrap method. He received the PhD degree from Cambridge University in 1945 and the ScD degree in 1965. In 1972 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and in 1989 was awarded the Samuel S. Wilks Medal for outstanding contributions to statistics. He was awarded National Medal of Science in 2002. CR Rao is Professor Emeritus of Statistics at Pennsylvania State University