ABSTRACT
Herbert Robbins is best known to most mathema-ticians for his collaboration with Richard Courant in writing the classic What is Mathematics?, but in the following forty years, Robbins’ work has earned him the reputation as one of the world’s leading statisticians. Jerzy Neyman once indicated how rare it was for a professor to place on a high pedestal one of his colleagues-of necessity, one of his “competitors.” And yet, in Neyman’s two survey papers on major advances in statistics during the second half of this century, the main breakthroughs cited by Neyman were all obtained by Robbins. Robbins is the Higgins Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Columbia University, and is known among friends for combining a cynical humor with a deep involvement in humanitarian causes. Among his well-known sayings are:
and (when asked by a university administrator if there might be a risk in recommending a junior faculty member for tenure):
In 1978 Jack Kiefer of Cornell wrote that “Robbins (then 63 years old) does not seem to have slowed down at all, and he is as lively and original now as in the past.” That’s still true. In 1982, I interviewed him at his home in East Setauket, New York, and it was immediately clear that he loves people and conversation. His broad interests, his many friendships, and meaningful involvementslike good vintage wine-seem to grow fuller and richer with time. All this, of course, made our meeting rewarding and memorable. It also made my job very diffi cult: trying to confi ne him to a few specifi c issues was like trying to pin down an enthusiastic, animated, intellectual octopus. The following is only a sample of what was retrieved from the occasion.
