Raghu Raj Bahadur (30 April 1924 – 7 June 1997) was an Indian
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 ...
considered by peers to be "one of the architects of the modern theory of mathematical statistics".
Biography
Bahadur was born in
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
, India, and received his BA (1943) and MA (1945) in mathematics from
St. Stephen’s College,
University of Delhi
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...
.
He received his doctorate from the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
under
Herbert Robbins
Herbert Ellis Robbins (January 12, 1915 – February 12, 2001) was an American mathematician and statistician. He did research in topology, measure theory, statistics, and a variety of other fields.
He was the co-author, with Richard Courant ...
in 1950 after which he joined
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. He worked as a research statistician at the
Indian Statistical Institute
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...
in Calcutta from 1956 to 1961. He spent the remainder of his academic career in the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
Contributions
He published numerous papers and is best known for the concepts of "
Bahadur efficiency" and the
Bahadur–Ghosh–Kiefer representation (with
J. K. Ghosh and
Jack Kiefer).
He also framed the
Anderson–Bahadur algorithm[Classification into two ]multivariate normal distribution
In probability theory and statistics, the multivariate normal distribution, multivariate Gaussian distribution, or joint normal distribution is a generalization of the one-dimensional (univariate) normal distribution to higher dimensions. One d ...
s with different covariance matrices
In probability theory and statistics, a covariance matrix (also known as auto-covariance matrix, dispersion matrix, variance matrix, or variance–covariance matrix) is a square matrix giving the covariance between each pair of elements of ...
(1962), T W Anderson, R R Bahadur, ''Annals of Mathematical Statistics'' along with
Theodore Wilbur Anderson
Theodore Wilbur Anderson (June 5, 1918 – September 17, 2016) was an American mathematician and statistician who specialized in the analysis of multivariate data.
He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was on the faculty of Columbia Uni ...
which is used in statistics and engineering for solving binary classification problems when the underlying data have
multivariate normal distribution
In probability theory and statistics, the multivariate normal distribution, multivariate Gaussian distribution, or joint normal distribution is a generalization of the one-dimensional (univariate) normal distribution to higher dimensions. One d ...
s with different
covariance matrices.
Legacy
He held the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1968–69)
and was the 1974 Wald Lecturer of the IMS.
He was the President of the
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 ...
during 1974–75
and was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 1986.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bahadur, Raghu Raj
1924 births
1997 deaths
Indian statisticians
20th-century Indian mathematicians
American statisticians
20th-century American mathematicians
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
University of Chicago faculty
American academics of Indian descent
Scientists from Delhi
Indian emigrants to the United States
American people of Indian descent
Mathematical statisticians