A Conversation with Arthur Cohen

Abstract

Arthur Cohen was born in 1933. He received his B.A. in mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1955, and then went to graduate studies in statistics at Columbia University. In 1957, he took leave from Columbia to serve for two years at the Communicable Disease Center, Public Health Services. He returned to Columbia, completed his studies and received his Ph.D. in mathematical statistics in 1963. Art joined the statistics department at Rutgers as an Assistant Professor, and two years later became Associate Professor. From 1968 through 1977, he served as chairman of the department during a critical period in its development. For 52 years, his wisdom has helped guide the department in its rise to excellence.

Art served as Editor of the Annals of Statistics for three years, Co-editor of the Journal of Multivariate Analysis for eleven years, as Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, each for five years. Art has over 140 publications. In an influential series of fifty-two Annals of Statistics and JASA papers, Art and co-authors developed wide ranging and fundamental results in decision theory, admissibility, Bayes’ procedures, sequential tests, complete class theorems, directional tests, order restricted inference and multiple testing. Art is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association and the International Statistical Institute.