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\pubyear{2009}
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\begin{document}
\begin{frontmatter}
\title{The Honorable Erich L. Lehmann}
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\runtitle{The Honorable Erich L. Lehmann}

\begin{aug}
\author{\fnms{Stephen}
\snm{Stigler}\ead[label=e1]{}}\\

\runauthor{Stephen Stigler}


\affiliation{University of Chicago}

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\end{frontmatter}


\quad The year 2007 marks a concurrence of important statistical anniversaries.  It is the 350$^{th}$
anniversary of the publication of the first printed work on mathematical probability, 
the short tract that Christian Huygens wrote following a visit to Paris, where he learned 
of the investigations of Fermat and Pascal. Also, 2007 is the 150$^{th}$ year 
since the birth of Karl Pearson, father of the Chi-square test and much else.  
And related to both those events, it is also the year our teacher, friend, and 
colleague Erich Lehmann \index{Erich Lehmann} celebrates his 90$^{th}$ birthday.  Christian Huygen's tract 
served as the textbook on probability for over a half century, helping to form that 
subject.  Karl Pearson inaugurated an important species of hypothesis testing\index{Erich Lehmann!hypothesis testing}. Both 
then have important similarities to Erich Lehmann\index{Erich Lehmann}. But rather than further explore 
those analogies immediately, I would like to characterize an important part of Erich's
ongoing research by looking back to a more modern document.  

The University of Chicago, rare among research universities, gives honorary degrees 
only in recognition of scholarly contributions of the highest order.  We do not 
use those degrees to honor movie stars, philanthropists, or even heads of state 
(at least not over the past 80 years).  There is a partial exception: we do so 
honor the departing Chair of our Board of Trustees.  But that is the limit of the 
exceptions.  We do not use this device to honor work done at Chicago; our major 
financial supporters are recognized in other ways; and discreet inquiries on behalf of 
politicians, celebrities, popular artists, and several heads of state have been politely 
turned aside, however meritorious they may have been on other grounds.  Scholarship is 
the only coin of our realm.  

One of the fields where this practice has been actively pursued is statistics.  
The first degree our newly formed department granted was an honorary Doctorate of 
Science to Ronald Fisher, June 13, 1952.  This was followed over the next 31 years by 
degrees to Harold Hotelling (1955), Jerzy Neyman\index{Jerzy Neyman} (1959), Maurice Bartlett (1966), John 
Tukey (1969), and Fred Mosteller (1973).  In 1990, in anticipation of our University's 
centennial celebration beginning the following year, the Department undertook to resume 
this practice after several years by proposing an honorary degree \index{Erich Lehmann!honorary degree}for Erich Lehmann\index{Erich Lehmann}.  

The procedure for granting honorary degrees at Chicago is a bit involved.  After 
getting departmental agreement (an easy matter in this case) it is necessary to 
prepare a detailed case to be submitted to a cross-university committee appointed 
for this task.  Exacting standards are upheld and only a fraction of proposals are 
given the nod of approval.  Local legend has it that when someone proposed the Queen 
of England for a degree, it was turned back with a request for her list of publications.  
The procedure is like that for hiring a senior scholar from outside the university: several 
letters of recommendation must be solicited, the evidence must be assembled and carefully 
presented, all with an uncertain outcome.  And unlike senior hires, even if the proposal is 
successful and the offer accepted, you do not get to keep the candidate!

In preparing Erich's case we solicited letters from a dozen of the top 
international statistical scholars over the past half-century.  
All of these were glowing testaments to an amazingly influential body of work, 
as well as to Erich's collegial role in helping to build modern mathematical statistics.  
To buttress the case we did a careful citation study to document quantitatively the pervasive 
influence of Erich's articles and books. To our eye there was no doubt, but all this needed 
to be presented to a demanding committee of some of the university’s best professors, 
regrettably none with more than a superficial knowledge of our subject.  It is that memo 
which I will now present. \\

	\qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad $***$\\
	
\qquad 23 April 1990\\

\qquad Memo to Committee on Honorary Degrees\\

On behalf of the Department of Statistics, and with their unanimous endorsement, 
I wish to nominate Erich L. Lehmann for an Honorary Degree\index{Erich Lehmann!honorary degree}.  We believe he would 
be an exceptionally appropriate candidate for a Centennial Honorary Degree\index{Erich Lehmann!honorary degree} at the 
convocation of October 1991; alternatively he could be considered for an earlier
convocation, such as June 1991.  Prior to his retirement in 1988, Lehmann was 
Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he remains 
extremely active.

Great scientists can be roughly classified as one of two types: those whose primary 
achievement was a single brilliant discovery, and those who have over the course of 
a life's work constructed a discipline, a school.  Lehmann has made many important 
discoveries, but he is more of the second type than the first.  In the years after the 
Second World War, the dominant paradigm in American mathematical statistics was the 
decision theoretic school of Jerzy Neyman\index{Jerzy Neyman} (Sc.D., Chicago, 1959) and Abraham Wald.  
Wald died tragically in 1950 and Neyman's attention was absorbed by other matters after 
the mid-1950's.  While many hands played a role in the prospering of this approach over 
1950–-1980, it is arguable that the chief architect of the expansion of the paradigm, and 
the one most responsible for its immense international influence over that period, was 
Erich Lehmann\index{Erich Lehmann}.

There is an interesting historical parallel to Lehmann's role in this school of thought.  
In the 1650's Pascal and Fermat founded probability theory.  Yet they taught few and 
published little.  It was Christian Huygens's 1657 tract that was responsible for the form 
in which these ideas were disseminated for half a century, and their widespread 
application in mathematics, philosophy, and science.  Similarly, it was Lehmann's 
mimeographed lecture notes of estimation (1950, widely circulated and reproduced, but 
only published as a book in 1983) and Lehmann's book of hypothesis testing\index{Erich Lehmann!hypothesis testing} (1959) that 
provided the form in which the Neyman-Wald approach came to dominate a major portion of 
the mathematical world.  Not all of the results are Lehmann's (though many are), but 
the arrangement, the elegant seamless presentation, the coherency of the whole, 
are his in a way that has not been true in many sciences.  To a large degree, Erich 
Lehmann \index{Erich Lehmann}created the curriculum of the world's graduate programs in mathematical statistics 
over the period 1960–-1980.  Lehmann has personally supervised over 50 Ph.D. dissertations, 
and he counts among his students some of the most influential statisticians in the United 
States, Europe, and Asia.

The focus of the school that is so associated with Lehmann is the application of 
decision theory\index{Erich Lehmann!decision theory} to statistical problems, the construction of a calculus of optimal 
statistical procedures.  In one simple setting, parametric estimation, an objective 
criterion (``a loss function'') is defined and an attempt is made within a framework of stochastic 
models to seek the best procedure, or at any rate to determine an order for the available 
procedures.  The pitfalls of this approach are many: In all but the simplest problems, the 
mathematical difficulties can be immense, and the specification of models and objective 
criteria that capture the essence of the scientific problem is rarely straightforward.  
The success of Lehmann and his school has been due to the balance they have maintained 
in creating a system of mathematical structures of sufficient richness to encompass a 
large range of practical problems, yet not so amorphously vague that a true discipline 
could not be constructed around them.  Mathematics flourishes in the detailed exploration 
of constrained spaces with widely accepted rules; statistics flourishes with the flexibility 
to treat the infinite variety of problems in the real world.  Lehmann's genius has been his 
ability to reconcile these divergent goals and build a school that has enriched both sides.\\

\qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad $***$\\
	
To this was appended the letters and the citation study.  \\

The proposal was successful; we were delighted when Erich accepted and both he and Julie 
attended the special Convocation on October 3, 1991, celebrating the University's Centennial. 
Their visit was the occasion for several parties, dinners, toasts, and culminated in 
a grand ceremony in Rockefeller Chapel [yes, we do recognize donors in other ways], 
attended by dignitaries representing the great universities of the world.  The citation 
on Erich's degree read:

\begin{quote}
Your research on the application of decision theory\index{Erich Lehmann!honorary degree} to statistical problems 
has helped create and organize modern mathematical statistics; your elegant 
treatises have guided the curricula of a majority of the nation's graduate programs 
and given shape to the discipline, and your teaching has inspired a generation of scholars.
\end{quote}
Erich has received many other honors, of course, including an earlier honorary 
degree at the University of Leiden.  And we have since 1991 given more honorary 
degrees; to Charles Stein (1992), Ulf Grenander (1994), Bradley Efron (1995), 
David Aldous (2000), Persi Diaconis (2003), and Grace Wahba (2007).  
The occasion of Erich's University of Chicago degree retains a special place 
in our memories.  So too, to those of us who took his classes (in my case some 40 
years ago) does the memory of his careful and supremely clear lectures, and his papers 
and books that helped shape the modern statistical world.  For all that and more, 
we may toast this extraordinary scholar on the 90$^{th}$ anniversary of his birth! 





\end{document}