Willem Rutger van Zwet was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, on March 31,
1934. He received his high school education at the Gymnasium Haganum in The
Hague and obtained his Masters degree in Mathematics at the University of
Leiden in 1959. After serving in the army for almost two years, he obtained his
Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam in 1964, with Jan Hemelrijk as advisor. In
1965, he was appointed Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of
Leiden and promoted to Full Professor in 1968. He remained in Leiden until his
retirement in 1999, while also serving as Associate Professor at the University
of Oregon (1965), William Newman Professor at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill (1990--1996), frequent visitor and Miller Professor (1997) at
the University of California at Berkeley, director of the Thomas Stieltjes
Institute of Mathematics in the Netherlands (1992--1999), and founding director
of the European research institute EURANDOM (1997--2000). At Leiden, he was
Dean of the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (1982--1984). He served
as chair of the scientific council and member of the board of the Mathematics
Centre at Amsterdam (1983--1996) and the Leiden University Fund (1993--2005).Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-STS261 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
