Page 633 - Probability and Statistical Inference

610 14. Appendix

guided. This controversy between Fisher and Neyman-Pearson was never
settled. Some of the letters exchanged between Neyman and Fisher have been
included in Bennett (1990). In his 1961 paper, Silver jubilee of my dispute
with Fisher, Jerzy Neyman sounded more conciliatory.
Neyman made fundamental contributions in survey sampling in 1934 and
later developed the notion of estimation via confidence sets in 1937. Neyman
(1934) has been included in the Breakthroughs in Statistics, Volume II [Johnson
and Kotz (1993)]. In all three fundamental areas of contributions, namely
tests of hypotheses-survey sampling-confidence sets, Neyman characteristi-
cally started by formulating the problem from what used to be very vague
concepts and then slowly building a logical structure within which one could
carry out scientific inferences.
His research arena was too vast for us to discuss fully. His contributions
have been far reaching. Many of his discoveries have become a part of the
statistical folklore. The phrases like Neyman-Pearson Lemma, Neyman Struc-
ture, Optimal C(α) Tests, Neyman Factorization, Neyman Accuracy, are parts
of statistical vocabulary.
Neyman came to visit U.S.A. for six weeks in 1937, lecturing in universities
and the Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C., and at that time he was
invited to join the University of California at Berkeley as a professor of statistics
to build a separate statistical unit. The offer came at a time when he was men-
tally ready to move away from the uncertainty in Europe and the oppression of
Hitler. Neyman arrived in Berkeley in August, 1938, and the rest is history.
In Berkeley, Neyman built the prestigious Statistical Laboratory and De-
partment of Statistics and he was the key attraction. He initiated and contin-
ued to organize the Berkeley Symposia where the brightest researchers as-
sembled to exchange ideas. Many path-breaking discoveries during 1950’s-
1970’s appeared in the highly acclaimed Proceedings of the Berkeley Sympo-
sium in Statistics and Probability. Neyman actively edited the Berkeley Sym-
posia volumes, sometimes with the help of his younger colleagues.
Neyman travelled extensively. When he did not travel, he hosted distin-
guished visitors at Berkeley. He had close ties with the leaders of centers of
learning in other countries. For example, Neyman had close ties with E. S.
Pearson, H. Cramér, A. N. Kolmogorov and P. C. Mahalanobis, and they were
very friendly. On a number of occasions, he visited (E. S.) Pearson in the
University College, Cramér in Stockholm, and Mahalanobis in the Indian Sta-
tistical Institute. Interesting details regarding Neyman’s visits to India can be
found in a series of Mahalanobis commemorative articles which had appeared
-
in Sankhya, Series A and B, 1973.
Neyman’s smiling face was unmistakable whenever he walked into a room