Peter Gavin Hall

Peter Gavin Hall AO FAA FRS[3] (20 November 1951 – 9 January 2016) was an Australian researcher in probability theory and mathematical statistics.[4] The American Statistical Association described him as one of the most influential and prolific theoretical statisticians in the history of the field.[5] The School of Mathematics and Statistics Building at The University of Melbourne was renamed the Peter Hall building in his honour on 9 December 2016.[6][7][8][9][10]

For other people named Peter Hall, see Peter Hall (disambiguation).

Peter Hall

AO FAA FRS
Peter Hall in his office at The University of Melbourne in 2007
Born
Peter Gavin Hall

(1951-11-20)20 November 1951
Sydney
Died9 January 2016(2016-01-09) (aged 64)
Melbourne
NationalityAustralian
Alma materUniversity of Sydney
Australian National University
University of Oxford (DPhil)
AwardsAustralian Laureate Fellowship (2011)
Guy Medal (2011)
George Szekeres Medal (2010)
Rollo Davidson Prize (1986)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Statistics
InstitutionsAustralian National University
University of California Davis
University of Melbourne
ThesisSome problems in limit theory for stochastic processes and sums of random variables (1976)
Doctoral advisorJohn Kingman[1][2]

Education

Hall attended Sydney Technical High School in Bexley, NSW during the years 1964-1969. He placed consistently high in examination results and in his final year, was among the top achievers in his form, and the winner of Old Boys' Union Mathematics prize.[11]

Hall earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford in 1976 for research supervised by John Kingman.[1][2]

Career and research

Hall was an author in probability and statistics. Mathscinet lists him with 606 publications as of January 2016. As of 2016 Google Scholar lists his h-index as 113.[4] He made contributions to nonparametric statistics, in particular for curve estimation and resampling: the bootstrap method, smoothing, density estimation, and bandwidth selection. He worked on numerous applications across fields of economics, engineering, physical science and biological science. Hall also made contributions to surface roughness measurement using fractals. In probability theory he made many contributions to limit theory, spatial processes and stochastic geometry. His paper "Theoretical comparison of bootstrap confidence intervals" (Annals of Statistics, 1988) has been reprinted in the Breakthroughs in Statistics collection.

He was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne,[12] and also had a joint appointment at University of California Davis.[13] He previously held a professorship at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications at the Australian National University. He was an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. He is one of only three researchers based outside of North America to win the prestigious COPSS presidents' Award.

Honours and awards

His awards and honours included:

Published Books
  • P. Hall; C.C. Heyde (1980): Martingale Limit Theory and its Application, Academic Press, New York. ISBN 0-12-319350-8
  • P. Hall (1982): Rates of Convergence in the Central Limit Theorem, Pitman, London. ISBN 0-273-08565-4
  • P. Hall (1988): Introduction to the Theory of Coverage Processes, Wiley, New York. ISBN 0-471-85702-5
  • P. Hall (1992): The Bootstrap and Edgeworth Expansion, Springer, New York. ISBN 0-387-97720-1

Personal life

Peter Hall was born to radiophysics and radio astronomy pioneer Ruby Payne-Scott and telephone technician William Holman Hall. His younger sister is artistic photographer and sculptor, Fiona Margaret Hall.[28] Hall was a keen photographer with a special interest in train photography.[5] He enjoyed travel and was a regular visitor to many universities around the world. He died of leukaemia in Melbourne on 9 January 2016. He is survived by his wife, Jeannie.

References
  1. Hall, Peter Gavin (1976). Some Problems in Limit Theory for Stochastic Processes and Sums of Random Variables. bodleian.ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 500461400. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.457865.
  2. Peter Gavin Hall at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. Robinson, John; Welsh, Alan H. (2018). "Peter Gavin Hall. 20 November 1951 – 9 January 2016". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. London: Royal Society. 64: 207–229. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2017.0035. ISSN 0080-4606.
  4. Peter Gavin Hall publications indexed by Google Scholar
  5. "American Statistical Association, Obituary – Peter G. Hall". Retrieved 12 January 2016.
  6. "University of Melbourne Media Release: Peter Hall Building". 10 October 2019.
  7. University of Melbourne, School of Mathematics and Statistics: Professor Peter Hall Archived 17 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Peter Hall Memorial Conference". hallmemorialconference.ucdavis.edu.
  9. "Peter Gavin Hall". peterhallmemorial.ucdavis.edu.
  10. Levey. "Peter_Gavin_Hall". www.stat-center.pku.edu.cn.
  11. STHS Journal, 1970
  12. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 February 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  13. "UCDavis – History of the Department of Statistics". Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
  14. "Fellows Detail » ASSA". www.assa.edu.au.
  15. "News from the National Academy of Sciences 2013". 30 April 2013.
  16. "Science staff and alumni receive Australia Day honours 2013". 14 February 2013. Archived from the original on 13 May 2014.
  17. "Australian Laureate Fellows for 2011 announced". Research Career. 10 August 2011. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  18. "Peter Hall accepts Guy Medal". RSSeNews. Royal Statistical Society. 3 June 2011.
  19. "George Szekeres Medal for 2010". 10 January 2010.
  20. "University of Sydney Honorary Awards: Professor Peter Gavin Hall". Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  21. "Awardees for 2007". Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  22. Hall, Peter; Presnell, Brett (1998). "Applications of intentionally biased bootstrap methods". Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. III. pp. 257–268.
  23. Inc., Advanced Solutions International. "ASA Fellows List". www.amstat.org.
  24. "Statistical Society of Australia, Pitman Medal". Archived from the original on 14 February 2016. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  25. "Account Suspended". www.sciencearchive.org.au. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  26. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2 November 2015. Retrieved 31 August 2015.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  27. "IMS Awards". imstat.org. Archived from the original on 19 October 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  28. Goss, W. Miller; McGee, Richard X. (24 September 2009). Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-642-03141-0.
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