A Conversation with Martin Bradbury Wilk

Martin Bradbury Wilk was born on December 18, 1922, in Montr\'{e}al, Qu\'{e}bec, Canada. He completed a B.Eng. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1945 at McGill University and worked as a Research Engineer on the Atomic Energy Project for the National Research Council of Canada from 1945 to 1950. He then went to Iowa State College, where he completed a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Statistics in 1953 and 1955, respectively. After a one-year post-doc with John Tukey, he became Assistant Director of the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University in 1956--1957, and then served as Professor and Director of Research in Statistics at Rutgers University from 1959 to 1963. In parallel, he also had a 14-year career at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1956 to 1969, he was in turn Member of Technical Staff, Head of the Statistical Models and Methods Research Department, and Statistical Director in Management Sciences Research. He wrote a number of influential papers in statistical methodology during that period, notably testing procedures for normality (the Shapiro--Wilk statistic) and probability plotting techniques for multivariate data. In 1970, Martin moved into higher management levels of the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Company. He occupied various positions culminating as Assistant Vice-President and Director of Corporate Planning. In 1980, he returned to Canada and became the first professional statistician to serve as Chief Statistician. His accomplishments at Statistics Canada were numerous and contributed to a resurgence of the institution's international standing. He played a crucial role in the reinstatement of the Cabinet-cancelled 1986 Census.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-STS272 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Firm Incentives for Invention Prizes with Multiple Winners

This paper considers several multiple winner models where firms compete for invention prizes determined by the social planner. The short-run model, with a fixed number of firms, can result in negative expected societal benefit where welfare gains are totally dissipated. In the long-run model, with entry and exit, it is demonstrated that there is always a positive net welfare gain. The final model developed is one where the social planner sets the prize and the number of firms. Under certain conditions that model results in smaller total research expenditures than in the long-run model.

The education of Walter Kohn and the creation of density functional theory

The theoretical solid-state physicist Walter Kohn was awarded one-half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his mid-1960's creation of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory (DFT). In its exact form, DFT establishes that the total charge density of any system of electrons and nuclei provides all the information needed for a complete description of that system. This was a breakthrough for the study of atoms, molecules, gases, liquids, and solids. Before DFT, it was thought that only the vastly more complicated many-electron wave function was needed for a complete description of such systems. Today, fifty years after its introduction, DFT (in one of its approximate forms) is the method of choice used by most scientists to calculate the physical properties of materials of all kinds. In this paper, I present a biographical essay of Kohn's educational experiences and professional career up to and including the creation of DFT

The 30th Anniversary of the Supercomputing Conference: Bringing the Future Closer - Supercomputing History and the Immortality of Now

A panel of experts discusses historical reflections on the past 30 years of the Supercomputing (SC) conference, its leading role for the professional community and some exciting future challenges

Faculty concert: The Muir String Quartet, April 13, 2000

This is the concert program of the Faculty Concert: The Muir String Quartet performance on Thursday, April 13, 2000 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were Quartet in D major for Flute and Strings, K. 285 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Trio No. 1 by Michele Levin, Concertino for Flute, Viola and Double Bass by Erwin Schulhoff, Quartet for Strings, Op. 3 by Alban Berg, and Sextet for Two Violins, Two Violas and Two Cellos by E. Schulhoff. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

History of Spin and Statistics

These lectures were given in the framework of the ``Dixi\`eme s\'eminaire rhodanien de physique'' entitled ``Le spin en physique'', given at Villa Gualino, Turin, March 2002. We have shown how the difficulties of interpretation of atomic spectra led to the Pauli exclusion principle and to the notion of spin, and then described the following steps: the Pauli spin with 2$\times$2 matrices after the birth of "new" quantum mechanics, the Dirac equation and the magnetic moment of the electron, the spins and magnetic moments of other particles, proton, neutron and hyperons. Finally, we show the crucial role of statistics in the stability of the world.Comment: latex file, 7 figures, 3 table