The COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship (formerly known as R. A. Fisher Award and Lectureship) is a very high recognition of achievement and scholarship in
statistical science
''Statistical Science'' is a review journal published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. The founding editor was Morris H. DeGroot, who explained the mission of the journal in his 1986 editorial:
"A central purpose of ''Statistical Sci ...
that recognizes the highly significant impact of statistical methods on scientific investigations. The award was established in 1963 by the North American Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) "to honor both the contributions of Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher and the work of a present–day statistician for their advancement of statistical theory and applications." The COPSS Distinguished Lecture is given at the Joint Statistical Meetings in North America and is subsequently published in a statistics journal. The lecturer receives a plaque and a cash award of US$1000. It is given every year if a nominee considered eligible and worthy is found, which one was in all but five years up to 1984, and in all years since. In June 2020, the name of the award was changed to its current name after discussions concerning Fisher's controversial views on race and eugenics.
Past recipients of the award
*1964
Maurice Bartlett
Maurice Stevenson Bartlett FRS (18 June 1910 – 8 January 2002) was an English statistician who made particular contributions to the analysis of data with spatial and temporal patterns. He is also known for his work in the theory of statis ...
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey (; June 16, 1915 – July 26, 2000) was an American mathematician and statistician, best known for the development of the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distributi ...
William G. Cochran
William Gemmell Cochran (15 July 1909 – 29 March 1980) was a prominent statistician. He was born in Scotland but spent most of his life in the United States.
Cochran studied mathematics at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cam ...
R. C. Bose
Raj Chandra Bose (19 June 1901 – 31 October 1987) was an Indian American mathematician and statistician best known for his work in design theory, finite geometry and the theory of error-correcting codes in which the class of BCH codes is p ...
F. J. Anscombe
Francis John Anscombe (13 May 1918 – 17 October 2001) was an English statistician.
Born in Hove in England, Anscombe was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Trinity College at Cambridge University. After serving in the Second World W ...
David H. Blackwell
David Harold Blackwell (April 24, 1919 – July 8, 2010) was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics. He is one of the eponyms of the Ra ...
Donald A. S. Fraser
Donald Alexander Stuart Fraser (April 29, 1925 - December 21, 2020) was a Canadian statistician, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. In 2012 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his influence in the advancement ...
Arthur P. Dempster
Arthur Pentland Dempster (born 1929) is a Professor Emeritus in the Harvard University Department of Statistics. He was one of four faculty when the department was founded in 1957.
Biography
Dempster received his B.A. in mathematics and physics ( ...
*1999
Jack Kalbfleisch
Jack may refer to:
Places
* Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community
* Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA
People and fictional characters
* Jack (given name), a male given name, ...
Raymond Carroll
Raymond James Carroll is an American statistician, and Distinguished Professor of statistics, nutrition and toxicology at Texas A&M University. He is a recipient of 1988 COPSS Presidents' Award and 2002 R. A. Fisher Lectureship. He has made funda ...
R. Dennis Cook
Ralph Dennis Cook (born June 20, 1944) is an American statistician, mostly known for Cook's distance and the Cook–Weisberg test. Cook is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Minnesota.
After graduating from Northern Montana College ...
Ross L. Prentice
Ross L. Prentice (born October 16, 1946) is a Canadian statistician known particularly for his contributions to survival analysis and statistical methods for epidemiology. He has worked at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1974 and is ...
Bruce G. Lindsay
Bruce George Lindsay (March 7, 1947 – May 5, 2015) was an American statistician best known for his contributions to mixture modeling and Likelihood function, likelihood theory.
Biography
Lindsay was born in 1947 in The Dalles, Oregon. He has ...
*2011
C.F. Jeff Wu
Chien-Fu Jeff Wu (born 1949) is the Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for his work on the convergenc ...
*2012
Roderick Little
Roderick, Rodrick or Roderic (Proto-Germanic ''* Hrōþirīks'', from ''* hrōþiz'' "fame, glory" + ''* ríks'' "king, ruler") is a Germanic name, recorded from the 8th century onward.Förstemann, ''Altdeutsches Namenbuch'' (1856)740 Its Old Hi ...
*2013
Peter J. Bickel
Peter John Bickel (born 1940) is an American statistician and Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Education and career
Bickel studied physics at the California Institute of Technology. He graduated from University ...
Stephen Fienberg
Stephen Elliott Fienberg (27 November 1942 – 14 December 2016) was a Professor Emeritus (formerly the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science) in the Department of Statistics, the Machine Learning Department, Heinz Co ...
*2016
Alice S. Whittemore
Alice Segers Whittemore is an American epidemiologist and biostatistician who studies the effects of genetics and lifestyle on cancer, after an earlier career as a pure mathematician studying group theory. She works as a professor of health researc ...
*2017
Robert E. Kass
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...
Paul R. Rosenbaum Paul R. Rosenbaum is the Robert G. Putzel Professor Emeritus in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked from 1986 through 202Kathryn Roeder
*2021
Wing Hung Wong
Wing Hung Wong () is a Chinese-American statistician, computational biologist, and Stanford University professor.
Biography
Wong graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 with a bachelor's degree. At the University of Wisc ...
Daniela Witten
Daniela M. Witten is an American biostatistician. She is a professor and the Dorothy Gilford Endowed Chair of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Washington. Her research investigates the use of machine learning to understand high-dime ...
( UW), started a discussion on renaming the Fisher Lectureship on Twitter as R.A. Fisher was a eugenicist. A petition to "Rename The Fisher Lecture After David Blackwell" was initiated by Miles Ott ( Smith) on Change.org. The COPSS leadership responded by soliciting input via an online form on the official website.
Harry Crane ( Rutgers), Joseph Guinness ( Cornell) and Ryan Martin ( NCSU) posted a comment arguing against the renaming on June 13, 2020. They argued that the lectureship was established to honor Fisher's scientific achievement, not the scientist. They proposed to amend the description of the lectureship instead of renaming it.
On June 15 the Executive Director of ASA, Ron Wasserstein, notified its members that the leadership has recommended changing the lectureship name to COPSS. The process that led to the decision was unclear. Ron commented on Twitter, "There is no principle of greater value than the principle of strengthening the statistical community by moving forward to form a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive society".
On June 23, the name R.A. Fisher Award and Lectureship was officially retired and the announced recipient of the award for 2020, Kathryn Roeder, was to receive the award under the new name. The chair of COPSS,
Bhramar Mukherjee
Bhramar Mukherjee is an Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher. She is the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor, John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor and the Chair of Department of Biostatis ...
, also made the announcement on Twitter. In their statement, the COPSS mentioned that they retired the previous name of the award "to advance a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive statistical community."
Other lecture series named after R. A. Fisher
Two other series of lectures are also named after R. A. Fisher:
*The Fisher Memorial Lecture on an application of mathematics to biology, usually given in the UK, first given in 1964
* The Sir Ronald Fisher Lecture on genetics, evolutionary biology or statistics, given at the University of Adelaide,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
International Prize in Statistics
The International Prize in Statistics is awarded every two years to an individual or team "for major achievements using statistics to advance science, technology and human welfare". The International Prize in Statistics, along with the COPSS Presi ...
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Guy Medals
The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...
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List of mathematics awards
This list of mathematics awards is an index to articles about notable awards for mathematics. The list is organized by the region and country of the organization that sponsors the award, but awards may be open to mathematicians from around the wor ...