Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao is an Indian-born, naturalized American, mathematician and statistician. He is currently professor emeritus at Penn State University and Research Professor at the University at Buffalo. Rao has been honoured by numerous colloquia, honorary degrees, and festschrifts and was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 2002. C. R. Rao was born on 10th September, 1920 at Hadagali in Karnataka. Rao earned an M.A. in Mathematics at Andhra University, another M.A. in Statistics at Calcutta University, and his PhD and ScD at Cambridge University. Since 1967, he has received 27 honorary doctoral degrees from colleges and universities in 16 countries on 5 different continents, including 7 degrees from India and 4 from the United States. Rao joined the ASA in 1970 and was honored two years later with election to Fellow for outstanding and prolific contributions and for his devoted statistical teaching and service. The ASA Pittsburgh Chapter named Rao its Statistician of the Year in 1981. In 1989, he was awarded the Samuel S. Wilks Medal for outstanding contributions to statistics. In 1997, he received the Distinguished Achievement Medal from the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment for outstanding contributions to the development of methods, issues, concepts, and applications of environmental statistics.