[Forum SIS] George Casella

[Brunero Liseo]

Il 17 giugno è venuto a mancare George Casella, uno degli statistici più
importanti e più incisivi delle ultime generazioni.
La morte è arrivata dopo una lunga malattia.

Allego il commento di Christian P. Robert, suo amico e collega,
apparso sul blog
http://xianblog.wordpress.com/

Gli sia lieve la terra.

BL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night, my dear friend George Casella passed away, after a long
illness he had fought with his usual determination and optimism.
Having known George for 25 years, I am devastated... He was a great
father / friend / collaborator / researcher / teacher / editor /
runner, and, above all, a great and unique person. The loss is
profound, the loss is significant, for me and for us... My thoughts go
out to his wife, Anne, and children, Benjamin and Sarah, who are the
ones to feel this loss the most keenly.

(The following is adapted from a recommendation letter George asked me
to write when he was considering moving to the University of Florida,
Gainesville, from Cornell, a task for which I considered myself
completely inadequate. I just hope it carries some of the love and
admiration I felt for George.)

To me, George was the epitome of the academic researcher and a
role-model: he had great ideas, he was enthusiastic about on-going
research, he was incredibly hard-working, he was an excellent
co-author, he had a very good vision of what is going on in the field
of Statistics and of what will happen, he was always ready to embark
on new directions of research, he was very supportive of young
researchers and students, he had superb organisational skills, and so
on.

To take a few examples and make this statement more accurate, consider
the excellent textbook he wrote with Roger Berger, the very deep
revision of Theory of Point Estimation with Erich Lehmann, or the
considerable improvement he brought in our translation of my French
book on MCMC methods: in all these, he illustrated pedagogical skills
which made him one of the best teachers I ever seen. Consider then the
job he did as an editor of JASA: as a reader, I think that he improved
the general quality of the journal (which was already high); as an
Associate Editor, I can also state that he had a very clear idea of
the editorial line he wanted to follow and was very helpful to authors
in changing good papers into great papers; as an author, I can at last
certify that he was quite impartial (but fair) in dealing with my
papers! [His editorship of JRSS Series B, which we shared for more
than two years, was equally superb!] Consider again the success
stories with his Ph.D. students, starting with Costas Goutis (who most
sadly died in 1996): George has always been my model as an advisor in
that he simultaneously helped the students quite a lot—from research
topics to research methods to organization to preparation for academic
careers—and let them as free and autonomous as possible. Consider yet
again his involvement in Environmetrics and Genetics, his breadth in
research topics, his numerous collaborations, the number of grants he
got, and you get quite a unique picture!

I must add, from an even more personal point of view, that George was
also the epitome of the ideal man: besides being a successful
academic, he was in parallel a devoted father, a volunteer
firefighter, a serious marathon runner, while being also involved in
community service. And all this with a constant good cheer, a
permanent attention to others, an on-going willingness to help
whenever and whoever he could. I always envied him for his relentless
energy to lead so many lives at the same time so efficiently!

(end of the letter)

At this time, many images come to my mind of all the things I shared
with George, from "illegally" crossing the border into Ontario to see
a baseball game to long runs around Belgrade Lake where we discussed
the contents of Theory of Point Estimation... One of the most recent
ones, so representative of him, is when I was leaving Padova in the
early morning by bus and saw George running his morning laps around
the Pratto della Vale in his determined and concentrated way. May he
run forever in Heavens!

_________________________________________________________________________________


-- 
=========================================================
Brunero Liseo
Dip. di metodi e modelli per l'economia, la finanza e il territorio
Sapienza Università di Roma
Tel. +39 06 49766973
Fax +39 06 4957606
http://geostasto.eco.uniroma1.it/utenti/liseo
=========================================================