Stephen Stigler

Last updated
Stephen M. Stigler
Born (1941-08-10) August 10, 1941 (age 82)
Minneapolis, US
Alma mater Carleton College (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Known for Stigler's law of eponymy
Scientific career
Fields Robust statistics
Institutions University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Chicago
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Thesis Linear Functions of Order Statistics (1967)
Doctoral advisor Lucien Le Cam
Doctoral students Lee-Jen Wei
Alan Agresti
Website www.galton.uchicago.edu/~stigler/

Stephen Mack Stigler (born August 10, 1941) is the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago. [1] He has authored several books on the history of statistics; he is the son of the economist George Stigler.

Contents

Stigler is also known for Stigler's law of eponymy which states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer – whose first formulation he credits to sociologist Robert K. Merton.

Biography

Stigler was born in Minneapolis. [2] He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was on linear functions of order statistics, and his advisor was Lucien Le Cam. His research has focused on statistical theory of robust estimators and the history of statistics.

Stigler taught at University of Wisconsin–Madison until 1979 when he joined the University of Chicago. In 2006, he was elected to membership of the American Philosophical Society, [3] and is a past president (1994) of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

His father was the economist George Stigler, who was a close friend of Milton Friedman.

Bibliography

Books


As editor

Selected articles

See also

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Stigler's law of eponymy, proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication Stigler’s law of eponymy, states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. Examples include Hubble's law, which was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before Edwin Hubble; the Pythagorean theorem, which was known to Babylonian mathematicians before Pythagoras; and Halley's Comet, which was observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Stigler himself named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of "Stigler's law" to show that it follows its own decree, though the phenomenon had previously been noted by others.

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References

  1. Catherine Behan (May 28, 1998) 1998 Quantrell Award: Stephen Stigler University of Chicago Chronicle. 17(17).
  2. Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial (1976). "Reports of the President and the Treasurer - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation".
  3. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-05-24.