A conversation with Z. William Birnbaum

Abstract

Z. William Birnbaum was born the son of Isaac and Lina Birnbaum on October 18, 1903 in Lwów (also called Lemberg in German), Austria-Hungary. He received a Master of Law degree in 1925 and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1929 from the University of Lwów, Poland (Lwów, pronounced "Lvoov," became part of Poland after World War I, and then part of Soviet Ukraine after World War II). After two years in Gottingen, Germany, where he did postdoctoral research and obtained an Actuarial Certificate, he became first an actuary for the Phoenix Life Insurance Company in Vienna, and then chief actuary for the Feniks Life Insurance company in Lwów. He emigrated to the United States in 1937 and became a Research Assistant in Biometrics at New York University. In 1939 he was appointed an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. Apart from visiting professorships at Stanford University, University of Rome, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at the University of Paris, he remained at the University of Washington until his retirement as Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Mathematics in 1974. He served as Editor of The Annals of Mathematical Statistics from 1967 to 1970, and as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1963-64. In 1983, he was awarded the Wilks Medal by the American Statistical Association. The following conversation took place in Seattle on December 2, 1989. © 1990, Institute of Mathematical Statistics. All Rights Reserved.