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

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

of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He has authored several books on the history of statistics; 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.

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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. 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 di ...

s of order statistics, and his advisor was Lucien Le Cam. His research has focused on statistical theory of robust estimators and the history of statistics. Stigler taught at

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

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) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

, and is a past president (1994) of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. His father was the economist

, 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 ...

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 Festschrift 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