Bhagavatula Lakshmi Surya Prakasa Rao is an Indian statistician. He was born on 6 October 1942 in Porumamilla, Andhra Pradesh. He completed his B.A. (Honours) course in Mathematics from Andhra University in 1960 and moved to the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, where he completed his M.Stat in Statistics in 1962. He graduated with a Ph.D in Statistics in 1966 from Michigan State University under . He won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Mathematical Science in 1982 and the Outstanding Alumni award from Michigan State University in 1996. He is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1983), Indian National Science Academy (1984), Indian Academy of Sciences (1992), and National Academy of Sciences (1993).