Agnes P. Berger (1916-2002) was a Hungarian-American mathematician who served as an associate professor of biostatistics at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

's School of Public Health, as well as a statistical consultant at

Mount Sinai Mount Sinai, also known as Jabal Musa (), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is one of several locations claimed to be the Mount Sinai (Bible), biblical Mount Sinai, the place where, according to the sacred scriptures of the thre ...

Early years

Her first experiences with mathematics were thanks to the Hungarian publication Kömal (Kozepiskolai Matematikai Lapok), a monthly magazine for high school students that included math problems. During her studies at the University of Budapest, she was a student of the prominent Hungarian mathematician

Lipót Fejér Lipót Fejér (or Leopold Fejér, ; 9 February 1880 – 15 October 1959) was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage. Fejér was born Leopold Weisz, and changed to the Hungarian name Fejér around 1900. Biography He was born in Pécs, Au ...

, whom she would remember years later for his short, detailed classes and dramatic endings. Her parents were friends with the parents of contemporary mathematician

Peter Lax Peter David Lax (1 May 1926 – 16 May 2025) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics. Lax made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dynamics an ...

. She earned her doctorate.

Career

Berger collaborated with other statisticians such at

Jerzy Neyman Jerzy Spława-Neyman (April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981; ) was a Polish mathematician and statistician who first introduced the modern concept of a confidence interval into statistical hypothesis testing and, with Egon Pearson, revised Ronald Fis ...

. She reviewed work of

Joseph L. Fleiss Joseph L. Fleiss (November 13, 1937 – June 12, 2003) was an American professor of biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he also served as head of the Division of Biostatistics from 1975 to 1992. He is ...

, another statistical mathematician.

Family life and last years of life

Agnes Berger married Laszlo Berger, with whom she had a son, John Joseph Berger. She died at age 85 at Lenox Hill Hospital on March 27, 2002.

Some publications

* With Abraham Wald, ''On Distinct Hypotheses.'' The Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1949), Volume 20, Number 1. * ''On Uniformly Consistent Tests.'' The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Volume 22 (1951), Number 2. * ''Remark on Separable Spaces of Probability Measures.'' The Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1951), Volume 22, Number 1. * ''On orthogonal probability measures.'' Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society (1953), Volume 4, Number 5. * ''On Comparing Intensities of Association between Two Binary Characteristics in Two Different Populations.'' Journal of the American Statistical Association (1961), Volume 56, Number 296. * With Ruth Z. Gold, ''On Comparing Survival Times.'' Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, Volume 4: Contributions to Biology and Problems of Medicine (1961), Number 67. * ''On comparing survival probabilities from discrete observations under unequal censoring.'' Statistics & Probability Letters (1983), Volume 1, Number 5. * With Ora E. Percus, ''On sampling by index cases.'' Statistics & Probability Letters (1985), Volume 3, Number 4. * With Guadalupe Gómez and Sylvan Wallenstein, ''A Homogeneity Test for Follow-up Studies.'' Mathematical Medicine and Biology (1988), Volume 5, Number 2.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Berger, Agnes Columbia University faculty Hungarian emigrants to the United States 1916 births 2002 deaths American statisticians Women statisticians