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14. Appendix 615

bility, electrical engineering, medical statistics, to name a few. The Cramér-
Rao inequality, Cramér-Rao lower bound, Rao-Blackwellization, and Rao’s
Score, for example, have become household phrases in these and other fields.
Rao’s (1945) paper has been included in the Breakthroughs in Statistics, Vol-
ume I [Johnson and Kotz (1992)].
Rao also made penetrating discoveries in nonparametric inference, higher
order efficiencies, estimating equations, principal component and factor analy-
sis. His book, Linear Statistical Inference, essentially took off from where
Cramér’s (1946a) classic text had left. This phenomenally successful work
first appeared in 1965 (Wiley), with its second edition out in 1973 (Wiley),
and it has been translated in many languages including Russian, German, Japa-
nese, Czech, Polish, and Chinese.
In applied areas, for example, in anthropometry, psychometry, economet-
rics, quality control, genetics and statistical ecology, Rao’s contributions have
been equally far-reaching and deep. His book, Advanced Statistical Methods
in Biometric Research, was published in 1952 (Wiley) and it included the most
modern statistical analyses of the day. He introduced and developed a com-
prehensive theory of what are customarily called the weighted distributions
which takes into account the visibility bias in sampling from wild-life popula-
tions, for example. The methodology of weighted distributions has played
fundamental roles in areas including statistical ecology and environmental
monitoring.
In mathematics also, Rao is considered a leader. We may simply mention
the areas, for example, the characterization problems in probability, differen-
tial geometry, and linear algebra. He has been in the forefront of these areas
over many decades. Much of the theory of the generalized inverses of matri-
ces was developed, unified and made popular by Rao himself and jointly with
S. K. Mitra and other colleagues. The monograph, Generalized Inverse of
Matrices and its Applications, jointly written by Rao and Mitra (1971, Wiley)
has been a landmark in this area. Rao’s another monograph, Characterization
Problems of Mathematical Statistics, written jointly with A. Kagan and Yu. V.
Linnik (1972 Russian edition, 1973 Wiley edition) was very highly acclaimed.
The recent article of Ghosh et al. (1999) supplies many details on Rao’s
phenomenal contributions. He has written or coauthored more than one dozen
books, over three hundred research papers, and edited many special volumes.
For his legendary contributions, Rao has received many honors from all over
the world. He has received more than a dozen honorary doctorate degrees
from prestigious Universities and Institutes spread all over the globe.
Rao is a Fellow of the Royal Society and King’s College, a Fellow of the