Olav Kallenberg

Last updated
Olav Kallenberg
OlavKallenberg.jpg
Born1939 (1939)
CitizenshipSwedish and American
Alma mater Royal Institute of Technology
Chalmers University of Technology (PhD)
Known forRandom measures;
Probabilistic symmetries;
Foundations of modern probability
Awards Rollo Davidson Prize
Scientific career
Fields Probability Theory
Institutions Chalmers University
Auburn University
Doctoral advisor Peter Jagers
Other academic advisors Carl-Gustav Esseen

Olav Kallenberg (born September 22, 1939) is a Swedish-American mathematician, working in all areas of probability theory. He is especially known for his work on random measures and probabilistic symmetries, and for his graduate-level textbooks and monographs. Since 2018 he is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Auburn University, AL. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

Source: [2]

Kallenberg was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, but grew up in Stockholm, where he attended the KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), division of Technical Physics, graduating with honors as a civil engineer. In 1966 he got a masters degree (then about equivalent to a present Ph.D.) in probability theory (belonging to the division of Mathematical Statistics at KTH) under the direction of Carl-Gustav Esseen. After a few years as a full-time university lecturer and industry consultant, he joined the Mathematics Department at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, where he got his Ph.D. in 1972 on a thesis on Random Measures, [3] under the direction of Peter Jagers and inspired by his work. (For administrative purposes only, Kallenberg appears to have been under Harald Bergström. [4] ) An extended version of the thesis was later published by Akademie-Verlag and Academic Press, and appeared in four editions, 1975-86. After graduation, Kallenberg stayed at Chalmers University on various post-doctoral positions, apart from year-long visits to Chapel Hill 1973-74 and Vancouver 1978-79. In 1985 he was appointed as Professor at Uppsala University, succeeding Carl-Gustav Esseen, which caused him automatically to lose his position in Gothenburg. However, due to a crisis in the Swedish house market, he couldn't afford his move to Uppsala, which is why he chose instead to move to the United States. [5] In 1986 he was appointed as a tenured Professor of Mathematics at Auburn University. In 2018 he retired as an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, to focus on his research, professional writing, and international travel.

Honors and awards

In 1958, Kallenberg was the national winner of a yearly mathematics competition for high-school students.

In 1977 he was the second recipient of the Rollo Davidson Prize [6] from Cambridge University, for his solution of a famous problem in stochastic geometry.

In 1986 he gave a one-hour plenary talk at the 2nd World Congress of Mathematical Statistics and Probability in Tashkent (then belonging to the Soviet Union but now the capital of independent Uzbekistan.)

In 1989 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. [7]

In 1993 he was a one-hour plenary speaker at the yearly American Mathematical Society Conference, held in Knoxville, TN.

In 2005 he gave a one-hour plenary talk at the 1st Franco-Nordic Congress of Mathematicians in Reykjavik, Iceland.

In 2006 he was selected as the Distinguished Graduate Faculty Lecturer at Auburn University. [8]

In 2006 and 2018 he gave the opening plenary talks at the international Vilnius and SPA (Stochastic Processes and their Applications) Conferences.

In 2013 he was honored by an international Olav Kallenberg Workshop at the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Djursholm, Sweden, attended by leading probabilists from eight different countries. [9] [10]

Professional Service

Editor-in-Chief of the leading Springer journal PTRF (Probability Theory and Related Fields), 1991-94.

Associate Editor for Zeitschrift für Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie and verwante Gebiete (predecessor to PTRF), Stochastic Processes and Applications, and Probability Surveys (over periods of time for each of them).

Selected publications

Books

Scientific papers

Other activities

References

  1. Faculty profile, Auburn University, retrieved 2013-12-20.
  2. 1 2 A lot of material on Kallenberg's biography and work appears in the extra materials link at https://extras.springer.com/?query=978-3-030-61870-4
  3. Kallenberg, Olav (1972). Characterization and convergence of random measures and point processes. Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie, 0346-718X; 42. Gothenburg. libris: 97984.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. Olav Kallenberg at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. "Correspondence of Olav Kallenberg, 1980–1996". University of Florida. Retrieved 2024-04-11. See last page of Letter to K. L. Chung, March 10, 1991, pp. 3-6.
  6. ROLLO DAVIDSON AWARDS, Rollo Davidson Trust, Cambridge University. Accessed January 24, 2010
  7. IMS Awards Archived 2014-03-02 at the Wayback Machine , Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Accessed January 24, 2010
  8. Math professor named Distinguished Graduate Faculty Lecturer for 2006, AU Report, Vol. 39, no. 11, March 2006. Accessed January 24, 2010
  9. Last, Guenter (November 2013). "Workshop in Honour of Olav Kallenberg, 24--28 June 2013, Institut Mittag--Leffler, Sweden" (PDF). Bernoulli News. 20 (2): 9–10 via Bernoulli Society.
  10. Kallenberg, Olav (28 June 2013). "Some Failures, Problems, and Conjectures from a Lifetime in Probability" (PDF).
  11. Diaconis, Persi (2009). "Book review: Probabilistic symmetries and invariance principles (Olav Kallenberg, Springer, New York, 2005)". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. New Series. 46 (4): 691–696. doi: 10.1090/S0273-0979-09-01262-2 . MR   2525743.
  12. For further info on Foundations of Modern Probability see https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-61871-1#about-authors