The Making of Statisticians. Questo articolo non è disponibile.The Making of Statisticians

Like many other scientists, I have long been interested in history. I enjoy reading about the minutiae of its daily unfolding: the coinage, food, clothes, games, literature and habits which characterize a people. I am carried away by the broad sweep of its major events: the wars, famines, migrations, reforms, political swings and scientific advances which shape a society. I know that historians value autobiographical accounts as part of the basic material from which the stuff of history is distilled; this should apply no less to statistical than to political or social history. Modem statistics is a relatively young science; it was while pondering this fact sometime in 1980 that I realized that many of the pioneers of our field could still be called upon to tell their stories. If, however, biographical material about these eminent statisticians was not gathered, then one might lose the chance to gain insight into the origins of many an important statistical development. The remarkable experience of these colleagues could not be readily duplicated. Fired by these thoughts, I took it upon myself to plan the framework of this book. In it, eminent statisticians (probabilists are included under this title) would be invited to sketch their lives, explain how they had become interested in probability and· statistics, give an account of their major contributions, and possibly hazard some predictions about the future of the subject.

1 Probabilists.- Probability and My Life.- From Riemannian Spaces to Characteristic Functions: The Evolution of a Statistician.- A Life for Probability.- 2 Statisticians in Stochastic Processes and Independence.- Chance and Change.- The Search for the Meaning of Independence.- 3 Mathematical Statisticians.- From Pure Mathematics to Applied Statistics.- Autobiography of a Mathematical Statistician.- A Statistician’s Progress from Berlin to Chapel Hill.- Reminiscences of a Mathematician Who Strayed into Statistics.- 4 Statisticians in Design and Computing.- My Experience as a Statistician: From the Farm to the University.- A Numerate Life.- From Cosmos to Chaos: My Scientific Career in Mathematics, Statistics and Informatics.- 5 Statisticians in Industry and Econometrics.- The Making of an Industrial Statistician.- Models for Knowledge.- 6 Statisticians in Demography and Medicine.- A Statistician in the Public Health Service.- From Medicine, through Medical to Mathematical Statistics: Some Autobiographical Notes.