| Herman Chernoff | |
| Birth Date: | 1 July 1923 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, U.S. |
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| Doctoral Advisor: | Abraham Wald |
| Thesis Title: | Studentization in testing of hypotheses |
| Thesis Year: | 1948 |
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Herman Chernoff (born July 1, 1923) is an American applied mathematician, statistician and physicist. He was formerly a professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Stanford, and MIT, currently emeritus at Harvard University.[1]
Herman Chernoff's parents were Pauline and Max Chernoff, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. He studied at Townsend Harris High School[2] and earned a B.S. in mathematics from the City College of New York in 1943.[3] He attended graduate school at Brown University, earning an M.Sc. in applied mathematics in 1945, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1948 under the supervision of Abraham Wald.[4]
Chernoff became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974,[5] and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980.[6] In 1987, he was selected for the Wilks Memorial Award by the American Statistical Association,[7] and in 2012, he was made an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[8]
Herman Chernoff's met his future wife, Judith, when they were both graduate students at Brown University in 1945, and married her in 1947.[9] She died at the age of 98 on June 9, 2023.[10] At the time of her death they were believed to be the oldest couple living in Massachusetts.[11]
Chernoff turned 100 on July 1, 2023.[12]