Peter Gavin Hall (20 November 1951 – 9 January 2016) was an Australian researcher in

probability theory Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expre ...

and

mathematical statistics Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory and other mathematical concepts to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques that are commonly used in statistics inc ...

. The

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 27, 1839, and is the second-oldest continuous ...

described him as one of the most influential and prolific theoretical statisticians in the history of the field. The School of Mathematics and Statistics Building at

The University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state of Victoria. Its ...

was renamed the Peter Hall building in his honour on 9 December 2016.

Education

Hall attended

Sydney Technical High School Sydney Technical High School is a state-financed Single-sex school, single-sex Selective school (New South Wales), academically selective secondary school, secondary day school for Single-sex education, boys, located in Bexley, New South Wales, B ...

in Bexley, NSW during the years 1964–1969. He placed consistently high in examination results and in his final year, was among the top achievers in his form, and the winner of Old Boys' Union Mathematics prize. Hall earned his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in 1976 for research supervised by

John Kingman Sir John Frank Charles Kingman (born 28 August 1939) is a British mathematician. He served as N. M. Rothschild and Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge from 2001 unt ...

Career and research

Hall was an author in probability and statistics.

MathSciNet MathSciNet is a searchable online bibliographic database created by the American Mathematical Society in 1996. It contains all of the contents of the journal ''Mathematical Reviews'' (MR) since 1940 along with an extensive author database, links ...

lists 606 publications as of January 2016. He made contributions to nonparametric statistics, in particular for curve estimation and resampling: the bootstrap method, smoothing, density estimation, and bandwidth selection. He worked on numerous applications across fields of economics, engineering, physical science and biological science. Hall also made contributions to surface roughness measurement using fractals. In probability theory he made many contributions to limit theory, spatial processes and

stochastic geometry In mathematics, stochastic geometry is the study of random spatial patterns. At the heart of the subject lies the study of random point patterns. This leads to the theory of spatial point processes, hence notions of Palm conditioning, which exten ...

. His paper "Theoretical comparison of bootstrap confidence intervals" (Annals of Statistics, 1988) has been reprinted in the ''Breakthroughs in Statistics'' collection. He was an

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

(ARC) Laureate Fellow at the School of Mathematics and Statistics,

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, and also had a joint appointment at

University of California Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

. He previously held a professorship at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

Honours and awards

His awards and honours included: * 2015 Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia * 2013 Foreign Associate,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

* 2013 Officer of the Order of Australia * 2012

Wilks Memorial Award The Wilks Memorial Award is awarded by the American Statistical Association to recognize outstanding contributions to statistics. It was established in 1964 and is awarded yearly. It is named in memory of the statistician Samuel S. Wilks. The awa ...

* 2011

Australian Laureate Fellowship The Australian Laureate Fellowship is an Australian professorial research fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. Fellows are chosen each year for five-year awards. In 2023 8 industry-focused Laureate Fellowships were awarded for the ...

* 2011

Guy Medal 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 bienni ...

in Silver * 2010

George Szekeres Medal The George Szekeres Medal is awarded by the Australian Mathematical Society for outstanding research contributions over a fifteen-year period. This award, established in 2001, was given biennially in even-numbered years until 2021 and has since bee ...

* 2009 Honorary Doctor of Science degree from The University of Sydney * 2007

Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture The Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture of the Australian Academy of Science is awarded biennially to recognise exceptional research by Australian scientists in the physical sciences. Nominations can only be made by Academy Fellows. Recipients Sour ...

* 2000 Elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) * 1998 Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

* 1996 Fellow of the

* 1994

Hannan Medal The Hannan Medal in the Mathematical Sciences is awarded every two years by the Australian Academy of Science to recognize achievements by Australians in the fields of pure mathematics, applied and computational mathematics, and statistical scienc ...

of the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soci ...

* 1990 Pitman Medal from the

Statistical Society of Australia The Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in Australia. It was founded in 1962 to support and unify the work of Australian state statistical societies that were al ...

* 1989 Committee of presidents of Statistical Societies Award * 1987

Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science The Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science is made up of about 500 Australian scientists. Scientists judged by their peers to have made an exceptional contribution to knowledge in their field may be elected to Fellowship of the Academy ...

* 1986

Rollo Davidson Prize The Rollo Davidson Prize is a prize awarded annually to early-career probabilists by the Rollo Davidson trustees. It is named after English mathematician Rollo Davidson (1944–1970). Rollo Davidson Trust In 1970, Rollo Davidson, a Fellow-e ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

* 1986

Australian Mathematical Society Medal The Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) was founded in 1956 and is the national society of the mathematics profession in Australia. One of the society's listed purposes is to promote the cause of mathematics in the community by representing ...

* 1986

Edgeworth David Medal The Edgeworth David Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Society of New South Wales The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society based in Sydney, Australia. The Governor of New South Wales is the vice-regal patron of the Societ ...

, Royal Society of New South Wales * 1984 Fellow of

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

Published books

* P. Hall; C.C. Heyde (1980): ''Martingale Limit Theory and its Application'', Academic Press, New York. * P. Hall (1982): ''Rates of Convergence in the Central Limit Theorem'', Pitman, London. * P. Hall (1988): ''Introduction to the Theory of Coverage Processes'', Wiley, New York. * P. Hall (1992): ''The Bootstrap and Edgeworth Expansion'', Springer, New York.

Personal life

Peter Hall was born to

radiophysics Radiophysics (also modern writing radio physics) is a branch of physics focused on the theoretical and experimental study of certain kinds of radiation, its emission, propagation and interaction with matter. The term is used in the following maj ...

and

radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies Astronomical object, celestial objects using radio waves. It started in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming from the Milky Way. Subsequent observat ...

pioneer

Ruby Payne-Scott Ruby Violet Payne-Scott (28 May 1912 – 25 May 1981) was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was one of two Antipodean women pioneers in radio astronomy and radio physics at the end of the second world war, Ruby Payn ...

and telephone technician William Holman Hall. His younger sister is artistic photographer and sculptor, Fiona Margaret Hall. Hall was a keen photographer with a special interest in train photography. He enjoyed travel and was a regular visitor to many universities around the world. He died of leukaemia in Melbourne on 9 January 2016. He is survived by his wife, Jeannie.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Peter Gavin 1951 births 2016 deaths Australian statisticians Probability theorists Officers of the Order of Australia Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the American Statistical Association Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the University of Melbourne Academic staff of the Australian National University Alumni of the University of Oxford University of Sydney alumni Australian National University alumni Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Deaths from leukemia in Australia Deaths from cancer in Victoria (state) Annals of Statistics editors Mathematical statisticians