Volume 2, Issue 12
Berkeley's Scientific Legacy
Jerzy Neyman and the start of Berkeley Statistics
When Jerzy Neyman arrived at UC Berkeley in 1938, he was thrilled to be faced with what he called a "tabula rasa" of statistical studies. During the previous two decades, statistical methods had bloomed as a tool of science and engineering and courses. Neyman was brought to Cal to launch the University's curriculum and research in the area. Called "a principal architect of modern statistics," Neyman directed what would become one of the preeminent hubs of statistical research in the world.
Neyman was born in 1894 in Bendery, Russia to Polish parents and earned a PhD at the University of Warsaw. A mathematician first, Neyman explored statistics during a job as "senior statistical assistant" at the National Agricultural Institute in Bydgoszcz, Poland. In 1925, he was awarded a fellowship to study mathematical statistics with the famed mathematician Karl Pearson in London. There he met Pearson's son Egon S. Pearson. During the next decade, the younger Pearson and Neyman jointly developed a groundbreaking and controversial theory on the testing of statistical hypotheses. It's now a core concept in elementary statistics textbooks.
"It is widely felt that in spite of the existence of a large number of special problems for which perfect solutions exist, statistical theory in general in its present state is far from being completely satisfactory from the point of view of its accuracy," they wrote at the time. Our intention is "to contribute toward the establishment of a theory of statistics on a level of accuracy which is usual in other branches of mathematics."
In 1937, a subcommittee established by the University of California's Committee on Courses urged the University to bring a professional mathematical statistician to campus to create a program within the Department of Mathematics. Neyman, then on the faculty of the University College London's Department of Applied Statistics, was recruited for the job.
Neyman's first achievement at Berkeley was the foundation of the Statistical Laboratory, a research center within Department of Mathematics. Once the Lab was underway, Neyman spearheaded a symposium of mathematical statistics and probability "to mark the end of the war and to stimulate the return to theoretical research." The massive success of the first symposium led to its series, with one taking place every five years. The Sixth Berkeley Symposium, attended by 240 leading scientists, resulted in the publication of a six-volume, 3,397 page proceedings.
"These symposia supplemented the teaching programs and research academic activities normally carried out in universities and other academic institutions," professor emeritus Chin Long Chiang, Neyman's former student, wrote. "They also had a great deal of influence on the attitude of theoretical statisticians and research scientists, making them recognize the need and the advantage of applications of statistics.
In 1954, Chancellor Clark Kerr recommended that a separate Department of Statistics with Neyman at the helm be spun off from the Department of Mathematics. Enrollment rapidly increased at a rate of 20-25 percent per year. From the classroom to his administrative office, Neyman was always an advocate for his students. One day in1940 during a class, he wrote two well known but unsolved problems in statistics on the blackboard. Student George Dantzig, arriving late to class, assumed they were homework. So he solved them.
"A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework -- the problems seemed to be a little harder to do than usual," Dantzig recalled. "I asked him if he still wanted the work. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever. About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o'clock, Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door. It was Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: 'I've just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication.'
Neyman died in 1981 at the age of 87.
"Neyman used to say 'Statistics is the servant to all sciences,'" Chiang once wrote. "In many ways Neyman had expanded the domain and improved the quality of the service."