ABSTRACT
My first contact with M.M. Rao was in the fall quarter of 1989 in an Advanced Calculus class. Before this course, like a typical undergraduate, I inquired of other students about him. Most of my information came from the graduate students at UCR, since they were the ones who had taken courses from him. The graduate students generally regarded him as a hard, but fair teacher. This positive tone, however, was laced with an undertone, not unlike the sort one would receive about a blind date, who in all other respects was perfect, except for some peculiar habit. It required only one lecture to discover the peculiarity of M.M. Rao. He is so absorbed into mathematics that where the man ended and the math began was blurred until the separation of the two is unimaginable.
