Prof. C.N.R. Rao (born on 30 June 1934, Bangalore, India) is a National Research Professor as well as Honorary President and Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science. His main research interests are in solid state and materials chemistry.

He is an author of over 1400 research papers and 45 books. He received the M.Sc. degree from Banaras, Ph.D. from Purdue, D.Sc. from Mysore universities and has received honoris causa doctorate degrees from 60 universities including Purdue, Bordeaux, Banaras, Calcutta, Sri Venkateswara, saw, IT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IISERs (Bhopal, Kolkata, Mohali, Penal, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Novosibirsk, Oxford, Stellenbosch, Grenoble, Uppsala, Wal., Wroclaw, Caen, Liverpool, St. Andrews and Desikottama from Visva-Bharati

Among the various medals, honours and awards received by him, mention may be made of the Marlow Medal of the Faraday Society (1967), Bhatnagar Prize (1968), Padma Shri (1974), Centennial Foreign Fellowship of the American Chemical Society (1976), Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Meclal (1981) and Padma Vibhushan (1985).

He has been awared the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna.