A Conversation with Peter Hall

Abstract

Peter Gavin Hall was born in Sydney, Australia, on 20th November, 1951, and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Oatley. He received a Bachelor of Science with first class honours from the University of Sydney in 1974, a Master of Science from the Australian National University in 1976 and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 1976. In 1976–1978, he was Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Melbourne. During 1978–2006, he served as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Statistics at the Australian National University. He became Professor of Statistics at the University of Melbourne in 2006, Australian Laureate Fellow in 2012 and was Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers in 2014–2015. In 2005, he commenced a one-quarter professorial position at the University of California, Davis. Peter has published 4 books and more than 600 research articles. He has made seminal contributions concerning the bootstrap, rates of convergence, functional data analysis, martingale theory, measurement error models, nonparametric function estimation and smoothing parameter selection. Honours include the following: Officer of the Order of Australia; Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and Fellow of the American Statistical Association; Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; honorary doctorates from the Université catholique de Louvain, the Universidad de Cantabria, the University of Glasgow and the University of Sydney; the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Award and the Guy Medal in Silver from the Royal Statistical Society. He married Jeannie Jean Chien Lo on 15th April, 1977. His mother, Ruby Payne-Scott, had a distinguished scientific career as the first woman in radio astronomy and her story is published as Under the Radar. The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott (2009) Springer. In 2015, Peter was diagnosed with acute leukaemia. He passed away on 9 January, 2016, in Melbourne, Australia.

This conversation took place in Melbourne, Australia, on 11 March and 1 April, 2015.