Reminiscences of a Statistician (PDF)

Mathematical preparation.- Becoming a statistican.- Early collaborators.- Mathematical statistics at other universities.- The annals.- The Berkeley statistics department I: establishment and first generation.- The Berkeley statistics department II: the second generation.- The Stanford statistics department.- Nonparametrics and robustness.- Foundations I: the frequentist approach.- Foundations II: Bayesianism and data analysis.- Statistics comes of age.- New tasks and relationships.- England.- Contacts abroad.

Erich L. Lehmann is Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the American and National Academies, a former Editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics, and President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Chicago and Leiden, and was awarded the Wilks and Noether prizes. He is also the author of Testing Statistical Hypotheses, Theory of Point Estimation, and Elements of Large-Sample Theory, all published by Springer. Two more elementary books, Basic Concepts of Probability and Statistics (joint with Hodges) and Nonparametrics have recently been reissued by SIAM and Springer, respectively.

From the Reviews:

"Reminiscences contains stories of people, their lives, their quirks and their science - told with gentle kindness and deep understanding of both the people and their science. It is a wonderful book and I urge everyone with an interest in people, in the development of 20th century science, or in statistics to buy, read and cherish it." (Howard Wainer, Journal of Educational Measurement, Summer 2009, Vol. 46, No. 2))

"This book is a gem, a must-read. It is a throughly enjoyable mixture of autobiographical and broader historical material, presented as mini-biographies of over 60 mathematicians and statisticians connected to the author....The book contains many anecdotes relating to what we might call career development, implicity emphasizing the role of chance in life. It contains much of interest on academic research, administration, teaching, the writing of papers and textbooks, collaboration, advising, and most prominently, friendship." (Terry Speed, Short Book Reviews)

"The book is, in part, autobiographical. It also provides biographical vignettes of the people Lehmann has known and associated with since his arrival at Berkeley in 1941. … This is the first book that provides insights into the personalities and progress of statistical work of this period … . Currently, the book is a very interesting read with much insight. In the longer term, I predict that it will be a valuable source for historians of the future wanting to write about this period." (David Bellhouse, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 k)

“This is an excellent book that can be recommended to anyone with an interest in statistics, the history of statistics, the history of science, and the philosophy of science. It is a personal story of the development of the statistical thinking that today dominates so much of the way we learn about the world, written by one of the main architects of this statistical thinking. … Lehmann gives a detailed