Emanuel Parzen (April 21, 1929 – February 6, 2016) was an American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. He worked and published on

signal detection theory Detection theory or signal detection theory is a means to measure the ability to differentiate between information-bearing patterns (called stimulus in living organisms, signal in machines) and random patterns that distract from the information (ca ...

and

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Exa ...

analysis, where he pioneered the use of

kernel density estimation In statistics, kernel density estimation (KDE) is the application of kernel smoothing for probability density estimation, i.e., a non-parametric method to estimate the probability density function of a random variable based on ''kernels'' as w ...

(also known as the Parzen window in his honor). Parzen was the recipient of the 1994

Samuel S. Wilks Samuel Stanley Wilks (June 17, 1906 – March 7, 1964) was an American mathematician and academic who played an important role in the development of mathematical statistics, especially in regard to practical applications. Early life and edu ...

Memorial Medal of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

Biography

Parzen attended

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Spec ...

. He then matriculated to

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, where he earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1949. From there, he went on to

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

, earning his master and doctorate degrees in mathematics in 1951 and 1953, respectively. His dissertation, "On Uniform Convergence of Families of Sequences of Random Variables", was written under

Michel Loève Michel Loève (January 22, 1907 – February 17, 1979) was a French-American probability theory, probabilist and mathematical statistics, mathematical statistician, of Jewish origin. He is known in mathematical statistics and probability theory f ...

. Parzen went directly into academia after graduate school, first serving as a research scientist in the physics department and assistant professor of mathematical statistics at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. He left there in 1956 for

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where he stayed for the next 14 years. During this time, he wrote what has become one of the classical texts in probability theory.Parzen, E. (1960) ''Modern Probability Theory and Its Applications'', John Wiley and Sons, New York. In 1970, he accepted the chair of the statistics department at

SUNY Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

and in 1978 moved to his last post as a Distinguished Professor at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

. Parzen died in Boca Raton, Florida on February 6, 2016. His son, Michael Parzen, is a Senior Lecturer of Statistics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Awards

* Fellow,

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

* Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

* Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Medal

References

External links

Emanual Parzen's faculty web page
at

Samuel S. Wilks Award Citations

Emanuel and Carol Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation

1929 births 2016 deaths American statisticians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Jewish American scientists Harvard College alumni Mathematicians from New York (state) Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science The Bronx High School of Science alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni 21st-century American Jews {{US-statistician-stub