A Conversation with Don Dawson

Abstract

Donald Andrew Dawson (Don Dawson) was born in 1937. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1958 and a master’s degree in 1959 from McGill University and a Ph.D. in 1963 from M.I.T. under the supervision of Henry P. McKean, Jr. Following an appointment at McGill University as professor for 7 years, he joined Carleton University in 1970 where he remained for the rest of his career. Among his many contributions to the theory of stochastic processes, his work leading to the creation of the Dawson–Watanabe superprocess and the analysis of its remarkable properties in describing the evolution in space and time of populations, stand out as milestones of modern probability theory. His numerous papers span the whole gamut of contemporary hot areas, notably the study of stochastic evolution equations, measure-valued processes, McKean–Vlasov limits, hierarchical structures, super-Brownian motion, as well as branching, catalytic and historical processes. He has over 200 refereed publications and 8 monographs, with an impressive number of citations, more than 7000. He is elected Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Canada, as well as Gold medalist of the Statistical Society of Canada and elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. We realized this interview to celebrate the outstanding contribution of Don Dawson to 50 years of Stochastics at Carleton University.