Opinion Express View on C R Rao: Numbers for the people

Mathematicians rarely acquire the kind of public fame that some other scientists do. A good part of that has to do with the fact they are engaged with ideas that appear abstract to lay people, even though many of those ideas might be enabling the “real things” that people regularly interact with. Some of the greatest names in mathematics in the last 150 years — David Hilbert, Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel, Paul Erdos — barely have any resonance among the general public. Srinivas Ramanujan is a rare exception. It is, therefore, not much of a surprise that C R Rao seems unfamiliar to most in the country. Rao, one of the biggest names in mathematics and statistics in recent times, passed away in the US on Wednesday, aged 103.

A former director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Rao made fundamental contributions to the field of statistics, many of which are part of econometric courses the world over. He developed methodologies that lead to much more reliable estimates of population-wide data or behaviour than was possible earlier. These are now widely used in research and policymaking exercises globally. As India began its journey as an independent nation, Rao pushed the government to collect more data and enabled the setting up of research units in government departments. He was one of those who sowed the seeds of data-informed policymaking in the country.

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Rao moved to the US after retirement. He continued to be prolific till late in his life. As Partha Majumder, himself a distinguished biostatistician, noted in an obituary in this newspaper, Rao’s last published paper came when he was 100. He won several awards and accolades, including the Bhatnagar Prize, Padma Vibhushan, and the International Prize in Statistics, commonly considered to be the statistics Nobel. His was a life lived in the pursuit of knowledge, and the use of that knowledge for peoples’ benefit.