Stephen Mack Stigler (born August 10, 1941) is Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of

Statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...

of 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 ...

. He has authored several books on the

history of statistics Statistics, in the modern sense of the word, began evolving in the 18th century in response to the novel needs of industrializing sovereign states. In early times, the meaning was restricted to information about states, particularly demographics ...

; he is the son of the economist

George Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and e ...

. Stigler is also known for Stigler's law of eponymy which states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer (whose first formulation he credits to sociologist

Robert K. Merton Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as th ...

Biography

Stigler was born in Minneapolis. He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. His dissertation was on

linear function In mathematics, the term linear function refers to two distinct but related notions: * In calculus and related areas, a linear function is a function whose graph is a straight line, that is, a polynomial function of degree zero or one. For dist ...

s of

order statistics In statistics, the ''k''th order statistic of a statistical sample is equal to its ''k''th-smallest value. Together with rank statistics, order statistics are among the most fundamental tools in non-parametric statistics and inference. Importa ...

, and his advisor was

Lucien Le Cam Lucien Marie Le Cam (November 18, 1924 – April 25, 2000) was a mathematician and statistician. Biography Le Cam was born November 18, 1924 in Croze, France. His parents were farmers, and unable to afford higher education for him; his father die ...

. His research has focused on statistical theory of robust estimators and the

. Stigler taught at

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

until 1979 when he joined the University of Chicago. In 2006, he was elected to membership of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

, and is a past president (1994) 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 ...

. His father was the economist George Stigler, who was a close friend of

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

Bibliography

Books

* * * ; As editor * *

Selected articles

* ——— * ——— * ——— ** ** * ——— * ——— Stigler, S. M. (1980). Stigler's law of eponymy. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 39: 147–58 (Merton Frestschrift Volume, F. Gieryn (ed)) * ——— * ———

References

External links

Official CV of Stephen M. Stigler (September 2015)

Homepage at the University of Chicago

Mathematics Genealogy Project: Stephen Mack Stigler
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stigler, Stephen University of California, Berkeley alumni Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Presidents of the International Statistical Institute Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute Fellows of the American Statistical Association American statisticians American historians of mathematics University of Chicago faculty Scientists from Minneapolis American people of German descent Living people 1941 births Mathematicians from Minnesota Members of the American Philosophical Society