Steffen Lauritzen FRS (born 22 April 1947) is former Head of the Department of Statistics at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and Fellow of

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship S ...

, and currently Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Copenhagen. He is a leading proponent of

mathematical statistics Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical an ...

and

graphical model A graphical model or probabilistic graphical model (PGM) or structured probabilistic model is a probabilistic model for which a graph expresses the conditional dependence structure between random variables. They are commonly used in probabili ...

s. He studied statistics at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

, Denmark, completing the degree of Candidatus statisticae (M.Sc. level) in 1972 and Licentiatus statisticae (PhD level) in 1975. He was appointed there as Lecturer of Statistics and remained until 1981. He continued as Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at

Aalborg University Aalborg University (AAU) is a Danish public university with campuses in Aalborg, Esbjerg, and Copenhagen founded in 1974. The university awards bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhD degrees in a wide variety of subjects within humanitie ...

, Denmark, from 1981 to 2004. From 2004-2014 he was Professor of Statistics at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, from 2014 to 2021, he was Professor of Statistics at the University of Copenhagen, and since 2021, he is Emeritus Professor of Statistics there. He was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute in 1984, and a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 2011. Lauritzen was awarded the 1996 Guy Medal in Silver by the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

. He served, among others, as Editor-in-Chief of the ''Scandinavian Journal of Statistics'' from 1998 to 2000. His book ''Probabilistic Networks and Expert Systems'' (1999,

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

), written jointly with Robert G. Cowell, Philip Dawid, and David Spiegelhalter, received the 2001 DeGroot Prize from the

International Society for Bayesian Analysis The International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) is a society with the goal of promoting Bayesian analysis for solving problems in the sciences and government. It was formally incorporated as a not for profit corporation by economist Arnold ...

. DeGroot Prize

. Accessed 27 January 2010

Selected publications

* Spiegelhalter, David J., A. Philip Dawid, Steffen L. Lauritzen and Robert G. Cowell "Bayesian analysis in expert systems" in Statistical Science, 8(3), 1993. * A. Philip Dawid, Uffe Kjærulff, Steffen L. Lauritzen, "Hybrid Propagation in Junction Trees." IPMU 1994

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lauritzen, Steffen 1947 births University of Copenhagen alumni Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute 20th-century Danish mathematicians Bayesian statisticians Danish statisticians Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford Living people Fellows of the Royal Society 21st-century Danish mathematicians