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Guide to the Meyer Abraham Girshick Papers
SC1236
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Table of contents
Call Number: SC1236
Creator:
Girshick, Meyer A., 1908-1955.
Title: Meyer Abraham Girshick papers
Dates: circa 1916-1967
Physical Description:
0.5 Linear feet
Summary: Research notes, writings and and manuscripts.
Language(s): The materials are in English.
Repository:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064
Email: specialcollections@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 725-1022
URL: http://library.stanford.edu/spc
The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in
original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.
The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in
original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.
[identification of item], Meyer Abraham Girshick Papers (SC1236). Dept. of Special
Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford,
Calif.
Professor Girshick was born in Russia on July 25, 1908. He came to New York City at the
age of 15 in 1923. The principal of the elementary school he attended in New York was
Angelo Patri who took a strong interest in the boy and, after he graduated from high
school in 1929, intervened personally to get him admitted to Columbia College. In 1934,
he entered graduate school at Columbia University to work with Professor Harold
Hotelling, who arranged a stipend from a Carnegie Foundation grant.
He left Columbia in June 1937 to begin a very distinguished career in government
service. For the next ten years he held positions in several government or
government-sponsored agencies including the Bureau of Home Economics and the Bureau of
Agricultural Economics in the Department of Agriculture, the Statistical Research Group
at Columbia University, the Bureau of the Census, and the Rand Corporation in Santa
Monica. He joined the faculty at Stanford University as Professor of Statistics in 1948.
He was a member of several professional societies and was president of the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics.
Professor Girshick has made a lasting mark on several different branches of mathematical
statistics. His contributions in all the fields in which he has worked have already
shown their enduring value. His work has been marked by continuous attention to
applications, as well as the fundamental theory, and evinces the beneficial
cross-fertilization of the two.
His earliest work was in the field of multivariate statistical analysis, where he made
important contributions to the sampling theory of the roots of the determinantal
equations. While at the Department of Agriculture he applied his work to a study of body
measurements of American boys and girls.
As a result of his participation in the Statistical Research Group, he became greatly
interested in the sequential analysis of statistical data then being developed by
Abraham Wald and others. He made a number of important specific applications of the
method, and contributed a fundamental innovation in determining the operating
characteristics of sequential sampling plans. Alone, and in collaboration with others,
he studied some of the estimation and probability problems arising as a by-product of
sequential analysis. His interest in sequential analysis merged into a broader interest
in statistical decision theory, which relates to the foundation of statistical inference
both in the non-sequential and the sequential cases. This work, in collaboration with
others, restated many classical statistical procedures from a more fundamental point of
view, and culminated in the studies of the invariance properties of statistical tests,
which have yet to be published. Much of his work was embodied in the book "Theory of
Games and Statistical Decisions" which he wrote in collaboration with David
Blackwell.
An example of what may represent Professor Girshick's outstanding characteristic was his
ability to make himself the center of a beehive of activity. Whenever a colleague or
student thought of some promising idea, he would automatically go to Professor Girshick
who would rapidly digest the idea and extend it in unexpected directions. One could
always count on his interest and advice in the work one was doing. These qualities made
the Department of Statistics a working group whose interrelated activities led to
increased accomplishments and satisfaction for all. There is very little that has been
produced by the Statistics Department which does not represent his ideas or his spirit.
His warm, enthusiastic interest in scholarly work led many workers in different fields
to seek him out as a collaborator.
Albert H. Bowker, Chairman Kenneth J. Arrow Herman Chernoff
http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/pdfmem/GirshickM.pdf
The materials consist of research notes, writings and and manuscripts.
Mathematical statistics.
Statistics--Study and teaching.