G. V. R. Rao

[3] On June 24, 1918, Rao was born in Rajahmundry[2][3][8] in the Andhra Pradesh province of southeastern India.

[2] He met and married Mary Fabrizio in New York, and they subsequently moved to Bangalore, India.

Their second son, Krishna was born, and the family subsequently moved to Woodland Hills, California.

The optimum turned out to be not only more efficient but also considerably shorter by about 60% than a 15-degree conical nozzle of the same area.

"[10] George P. Sutton, who worked with Rao at Rocketdyne, said that "bell shape or curved exit contour is used almost universally today for nozzles designed since about 1960 for large as well as small thrust chamber nozzles" and for both solid and liquid propellants.

[11] In 1963, the Advanced Propulsion Section of NASA published Computation of Plug Nozzle Contours by the Rao Optimum Thrust Method about a study that was performed to design a plug nozzle using Rao's maximum thrust theory using a FORTRAN computer program.

[3] His patented inventions include Device for thrust spoiling and thrust reversal (1957),[16] Quiet fan with non-radial elements (1975),[17] Shock wave suppressing flow plate for pulsed lasers (1984),[18][19] and Mixing aids for supersonic flows (1990).