A Conversation with Jayaram Sethuraman

arXiv:0808.4043v1 [stat.ME] 29 Aug 2008 Statistical Science 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2, 272–285 DOI: 10.1214/07-STS237 c ⃝Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2008 A Conversation with Jayaram Sethuraman Myles Hollander Abstract. Jayaram Sethuraman was born in the town of Hubli in Bombay Province (now Kar- nataka State) on October 3, 1937. His early years were spent in Hubli and in 1950 his family moved to Madras (now renamed Chennai). He graduated from Madras University in 1957 with a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in statistics and he earned his M.A. degree in statistics from Madras Univer- sity in 1958. He earned a Ph.D. in statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute in 1962. Before returning to ISI in 1965 as an Associate Professor, he was a Research Associate at the University of North Carolina 1962–1963, at Michigan State University in 1963–1964 and at Stanford Uni- versity 1964–1965. After three years at the ISI, Sethuraman moved to Florida State University in 1968 as Full Professor. During his career at FSU, he made sojourns as Visiting Professor to the University of Michigan, 1974–1975, the ISI in fall 1977, as a Visiting Professor and Acting Head, ISI Bangalore Center, 1979–1980. He was a senior ASA/NSF/NIST Fellow 1994–1995 and a Fulbright Senior Researcher at ISI Bangalore 1995–1996. Although Sethuraman officially retired on January 31, 2004 and was named Professor Emeritus at FSU, he continues to be extremely active. He participates in all activities in the Department of Statistics and holds a Courtesy Professor appointment in the Department of Religion. He held an appointment as Professor, University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2004, and was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the Indian Statistical Institute of Technology, Chennai, 2005. Sethuraman has been a superior researcher throughout his career, making important contribu- tions in many areas including asymptotic distribution theory, large deviations theory, moderate deviations theory for which he was the pioneer, limit theory, nonparametric statistics, Dirichlet processes and Bayesian nonparametrics, stopping times for sequential estimation and testing, order statistics, stochastic majorization, Bahadur and Pitman efficiency, Markov chain Monte Carlo, reliability theory, survival analysis and image analysis. Throughout his career, he has en- joyed continuous external research support from the U.S. Army Office of Research and support from the Academy of Applied Science for mentoring high school students. Jayaram Sethuraman has received many recognitions for his contributions to the discipline of statistics and to the advancement of science among future scholars. He was elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1968) and the American Statistical Association (1971), and became an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (1972). He received the U.S. Army S. S. Wilks Award (1994), was the R. A. Bradley Lecturer, University of Georgia (1995), received the Teaching Incentive Program Award, FSU (1995), and the Professorial Excellence Award, FSU (1996). He was chairman of the FSU Statistics Department 1987–1990. Sethuraman received an ASA Service Award (2001), the President’s Continuing Education Award, FSU (2002), and the Bhargavi and C. R. Rao Prize, Pennsylvania State University (2005). In 1993 he was named the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor, FSU. This award is made to only one faculty member per year and is the University’s highest faculty honor. Key words and phrases: Bayes risk efficiency, Dirichlet process, image analysis, large deviations, moderate deviations, nonparametric Bayes methods, reliability. Myles Hollander is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor and Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistics and Statistical Consulting Center, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4330, USA e-mail: holland@stat.fsu.edu. This is an electronic reprint of the original article published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in Statistical Science, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2, 272–285. This reprint differs from the original in pagination and typographic detail. 1 2 M. HOLLANDER The following conversation took place in Myles Hollander’s office at the Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, on July 7, 2006. GROWING UP IN HUBLI AND MADRAS Myles: Sethu, it’s a pleasure to be able to have this conversation with you today. Let’s begin with your early years in India. You grew up in Hubli. Sethu: Yes, Hubli is about 500 miles northwest from Madras. It’s a railroad town. It has a railway workshop, so there are support offices for the railway in Hubli and my father was working in one of those railway offices. Myles: What type of work did he do in that office? Sethu: He was a clerk in the Electrical Engineering Department. Myles: How large is your family? Sethu: We are five surviving brothers. There were eight children born in the family. All boys. However, the first three died within a year or two. So w

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