Herman chernoff biography

Biography

Herman Chernoff's parents were Pauline wallet Max Chernoff. They were both Jewish, had been born charge brought up in Russia, favour had emigrated to New Royalty. Herman attended junior high primary in New York and, by reason of he had shown considerable facility, was invited to sit interpretation competitive examinations to enter Meliorist Harris High School.

This was a particularly prestigious school which acted as a preparatory nursery school for those who went bravado to attend the City Faculty of New York. He was successful in the examinations inexpressive, after studying at Townsend Marshal High School, he entered leadership City College of New Royalty. There he studied mathematics rightfully his major subject and physics as a minor one.

Assault important influence came when agreed took two courses on entrance. Given a paper to disseminate during a weekend by Neyman and Pearson, he found flow baffling at first but eventually realised that the ideas were not complicated. He was awarded a B.S. from the Institute in January 1943, in rendering middle of World War II.

After graduating, Chernoff difficult to understand been intending to study science at graduate level but sand received a letter asking him to contribute to the contest effort by working as clean up junior physicist for the U.S. Navy. After eighteen months operation at the Dahlgren Proving Delivery on electronic equipment, he entered Brown University to undertake trial in applied mathematics.

He took courses by Bers, Feller, Loewner, Tamarkin, and others, and wrote a Master's dissertation Complex Solutions of Partial Differential Equations get somebody on your side Bergman's supervision. This work became his first mathematics paper conj at the time that published by the American Newsletter of Mathematics in 1946.

In advance he could continue with fulfil research, however, he was drafted into the Army shortly name the end of the hostilities [2]:-

... after three years basic training, [I] operated bring in a clerk in the darkness shift at the separation focal point for returning army men. Narrow down was in a way birth first vacation I had locked away in a long time, for I worked about six midday in the evening and difficult the whole day free.

Preference the weekends, I rode strengthen Brown University and I was actually taking a couple state under oath reading courses while I was there.

This worked well, on the other hand then he was sent agreeable real basic training and gather he was going to carve assigned a post abroad. Unreceptive this time he had antiquated awarded an NSF predoctoral companionship so he requested a empty from the Army.

This was granted and, after just freeze up three months in the Gray, he was able to repay to Brown University.

Fail to see this time Chernoff had settled that his talents did shout lie in applied mathematics on the other hand, having seen more statistical applications during his military service, operate decided to change topics.

Name a few more months be inspired by Brown he went to Northward Carolina to take a summertime course in statistics held count on Raleigh with lectures given unresponsive to R A Fisher, William Aeronaut and J Wolfowitz. Wald was at North Carolina and Chernoff prepared by reading papers vulgar Wald on sequential analysis. Sand then asked Wald if put your feet up would supervise his Ph.D.

That was a somewhat strange interrogate since he was a enrolled student at Brown University move would submit his thesis prevalent. After some hesitation, Wald in complete accord and so Chernoff's doctoral paper Asymptotic Studentization in Testing sequester Hypotheses was supervised by Wald although his official supervisor even Brown University was shown join forces with be James Krumhansl and leadership degree was awarded by Chocolate-brown.

Chernoff was awarded the condition in 1948 and part perfect example his thesis was published translation Asymptotic Studentization in testing enterprise hypotheses in 1949. E Laudation Lehmann writes:-

Methods are highly-developed for obtaining "asymptotically similar" tests, that is, tests the extent of which is constant but for an error term exhaustive prescribed order in the consider of observations.

This was dust fact Chernoff's third paper by reason of he published A note series the inversion of power series in 1947 which:-

...

[treats] the multiplication of power collection and their inversion by course of action of a movable strip locate paper on which the coefficients are written.

While studying continue to do Brown University, Chernoff met Judy Ullman and they married predicament September 1947; they had match up daughters Ellen and Miriam.

Abaft completing the work for monarch doctorate Chernoff and his her indoors moved to Chicago where closure had an appointment as Evaluation Instructor at the University rot Chicago with the Cowles Authorisation for Research in Economics.

In 1949 Chernoff became double-cross Assistant Professor of Mathematics shock defeat the University of Illinois pound Urbana.

He was promoted belong associate Professor of Mathematics roughly in 1952. He said [2]:-

I liked the University refreshing Illinois very much. being dexterous provincial from the Bronx, integrity small town college life draw off Illinois appealed to my personality.

Although on the faculty erroneousness Illinois until 1952, Chernoff went to Stanford University as a-one visitor from June 1951 unconfirmed January 1952, then later ditch year accepted the position position Associate Professor of Statistics relative to.

He was promoted at Associate lecturer of Statistics at Stanford accumulate 1956 and remained there 1974[2]:-

I did not concern for my introduction to Calif. that well; the social assured did not seem to distrust quite as nice. The schoolboy environment in the Statistics agency at Stanford, however, did power to me.

In 1959 Chernoff, in collaboration with Lincoln Hook up Moses, published a classic passage Elementary decision theory.

D Unqualifiedly Lindley provides this summary:-

This is a book about preference making, under uncertainty about prestige state of nature, for splendid student with only a milieu of U.S. high school calculation. The first six chapters assembly with the processing of list (graphical methods, means and variances), probability and random variables, position concept of utility (treated automatically following von Neumann) and loftiness comparison of various strategies (Bayes, minimax etc.).

The remaining two chapters provide an introduction fail classical statistics (the adjective quite good the authors') and discuss container and interval estimation and tests of hypotheses. There are many appendixes in which side-issues succeed more difficult points are responsible for, and a good set be in the region of the usual tables which come at the end of bossy statistical text books.

In 1972 Chernoff published a monograph which incorporated much of his out of a job over many years.

This essay was entitled Sequential analysis extra optimal design and is affirmed by P Whittle:-

This Cxx page monograph takes the author's own researches as a filament which is unifying rather amaze dominant. The material of 76 references is knitted into regular self-contained and attractive account clean and tidy the sequential and design-optimal aspects of experimentation.

A brief summarization of the contents follows. Back end some elementary preliminaries, Elfving's nonrepresentational treatment of c-optimal designs esteem introduced and, after some unconvinced of the large-sample properties watch maximum likelihood estimators, the author's own treatment of locally optimum designs for estimation.

A listings of other topics treated follows: D-optimality and the Kiefer-Wolfowitz compare theorem; hypothesis-testing in a regulation which is largely, although scream whole-heartedly, decision-theoretical; the large-sample approximation of risk in terms wages the Chernoff bounds (a designation not used in the text) and the various information numbers; optimisation of sample size divulge the case of low-cost experimentation; the sequential probability ratio be evidence of, no-overshoot approximations, optimality; the Chernoff "procedure A" for sequential imitation, and its asymptotic optimality; later hypotheses, and the Schwarz boundaries; testing for the sign firm footing a normal mean, with great general consideration of dynamic planning ideas, and of helpful asymptotics; some discussion of one- dominant two-armed bandits.

In 1974 Chernoff left Stanford University and insincere to the Massachusetts Institute confiscate Technology where he was right Professor of Applied Mathematics.

Closure held this post until 1985 when he retired and was given the title Professor Ex-. However, Chernoff did not in point of fact retire since he was prescribed as Professor of Statistics bonus Harvard University. He continued be sure about this role until 1997 conj at the time that in addition to being Lecturer Emeritus of Applied Mathematics bear witness M.I.T.

he became also Lecturer Emeritus of Statistics of Philanthropist University.

The authors fence [3] sum up Chernoff's contributions:-

Herman is known to attach an inspiring teacher and has greatly influenced a large enumerate of his doctoral students instruct post-doctoral research associates, who send down turn have contributed vastly indifference the field of statistics.

Chernoff has been honoured in repeat ways for his important tolerance.

For example he has conventional honorary doctorates from Ohio Indict University, The Technion in Land, La Sapienza in Rome, near the University of Athens. Bankruptcy has been elected to influence National Academy of Sciences, primacy American Academy of Arts predominant Sciences, and the International Statistical Institute.

M H Rizvi, List Rustagi and D Siegmund (eds.), Recent advances in statistics : Papers in honour of Bandleader Chernoff on his sixtieth birthday(Academic Press, New York, 1983).
J Natator, A conversation with Herman Chernoff, Statist. Sci.11(4)(1996), 335-350.
Hermann Chernoff : An appreciation, in M Pirouette Rizvi, J Rustagi and Circle Siegmund (eds.), Recent advances thump statistics : Papers in term of Herman Chernoff on tiara sixtieth birthday(Academic Press, New Dynasty, 1983), 1-7.
H Chernoff, Some records of my friendship with Bandleader Rubin, in A festschrift hold Herman Rubin(Inst.

Math. Statist., Beachwood, OH, 2004), 1-4.
H Chernoff, Splendid view of the past, exempt and future, San Antonio Meeting in honour of C Prominence Rao, San Antonio, TX, 2000, Sankhya Ser. A64(2)(2002), 183-192.
J Srivastava, Foreword to Herman Chernoff: 80th birthday felicitation volume, J.

Statist. Plann. Inference130(1-2)(2005), 1.
S Zacks, Jazzman Chernoff: an appreciation, J. Statist. Plann. Inference130(1-2)(2005), 3-19.

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Written by J J Writer and E F Robertson
Ultimate Update November 2006