Meyer Abraham Girshick (born in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, July 25, 1908; died in Palo Alto, California, USA, March 2, 1955) was a Russian-American statistician. Girshick emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1922. He received his undergraduate degree from

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 ...

in 1932 and studied in the graduate school at Columbia under

Harold Hotelling Harold Hotelling (; September 29, 1895 – December 26, 1973) was an American mathematical statistician and an influential economic theorist, known for Hotelling's law, Hotelling's lemma, and Hotelling's rule in economics, as well as Hotelling ...

from 1934 to 1937. From 1937 to 1946 he worked at various bureaus in the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

; he worked in the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University briefly during World War II and also worked briefly in the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...

. Girshick joined the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

in the summer of 1947. He became a professor of statistics at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1948, where he remained until his death. Girshick is known for his contributions to

sequential analysis In statistics, sequential analysis or sequential hypothesis testing is statistical analysis where the sample size is not fixed in advance. Instead data is evaluated as it is collected, and further sampling is stopped in accordance with a pre-defi ...

and

decision theory Decision theory or the theory of rational choice is a branch of probability theory, probability, economics, and analytic philosophy that uses expected utility and probabilities, probability to model how individuals would behave Rationality, ratio ...

. He was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1952. Girshick had previously been elected a fellow of the IMS in 1943 and a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1946.

Selected works

Contributions to the Theory of Sequential Analysis. I
M. A. Girshick, ''The Annals of Mathematical Statistics'' 17, #2 (June 1946), pp. 123–143, , .
Contributions to the Theory of Sequential Analysis, II, III
M. A. Girshick, ''The Annals of Mathematical Statistics'' 17, #3 (September 1946), pp. 282–298, , . * ''Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions'', David Blackwell and M. A. Girshick, New York, London, Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1954.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Girshick, Meyer Abraham Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics 1908 births 1955 deaths American statisticians 20th-century American mathematicians RAND Corporation people United States Department of Agriculture people Columbia University alumni Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Statistical Association Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty United States Census Bureau people Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States