Mentors and Early Collaborators: Reminiscences from the Years 1940-1956 with an Epilogue

Abstract

These reminiscences extend from the year 1940, in which I arrived in Berkeley, to 1956, the year in which Neyman resigned from the chairmanship of the Berkeley Statistics Department and handed its leadership over to the next generation. They sketch my experiences with six scientists who have influenced me as mentors or collaborators: Evans, Neyman, Wald, Scheffe, Stein and Hodges. The origin of these recollections was a conversation with Agnes Herzberg and Persi Diaconis, which was videotaped under the sponsorship of Pfizer Central Research and the American Statistical Association on April 28, 1992 by the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut under the direction of Harry Posten. Although the conversation went in a somewhat different direction and the overlap is moderate, it got me thinking about the people who influenced me in my 20's and 30's and thus led to the present paper.