Nationality Australia Siblings Fiona Margaret Hall Role Researcher | Name Peter Hall Doctoral advisor John Kingman Fields Mathematics, Statistics | |
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Born 20 November 1951 (age 72)
Sydney, New South Wales ( 1951-11-20 ) Alma mater University of Sydney
Australian National University
University of Oxford Parents Ruby Payne-Scott, Bill Hall Education University of Oxford, University of Sydney, Australian National University Awards Guy Medal, Rollo Davidson Prize, George Szekeres Medal Similar People Ruby Payne‑Scott, Fiona Margaret Hall, Jean‑Francois Le Gall, John Kingman, Marc Yor | ||
Peter Gavin Hall (20 November 1951 – 9 January 2016) was an Australian researcher in probability theory and mathematical statistics. The American Statistical Association described him as one of the most influential and prolific theoretical statisticians in the history of the field. The School of Mathematics and Statistics Building at The University of Melbourne was renamed the Peter Hall building in his honour on 9 December 2016.
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Academic career
Hall was an author in probability and statistics. Mathscinet lists him with 606 publications as of January 2016. Google Scholar lists him with an h-index of 113 as of December 2016. He made contributions to nonparametric statistics, in particular for curve estimation and resampling: the bootstrap method, smoothing, density estimation, and bandwidth selection. He worked on numerous applications across fields of economics, engineering, physical science and biological science. Hall also made contributions to surface roughness measurement using fractals. In probability theory he made many contributions to limit theory, spatial processes and stochastic geometry. His paper "Theoretical comparison of bootstrap confidence intervals" (Annals of Statistics, 1988) has been reprinted in the Breakthroughs in Statistics collection.
Hall earned his Doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1976. He was an ARC Laureate Fellow at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne, and also had a joint appointment at University of California Davis. He previously held a professorship at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications at the Australian National University. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. He is one of only three researchers based outside of North America to win the prestigious COPSS presidents' Award.
Major Honours and Awards
Published Books
Personal life
Peter Hall was born to radiophysics and radio astronomy pioneer Ruby Payne-Scott and telephone technician William Holman Hall. His younger sister is artistic photographer and sculptor, Fiona Margaret Hall.
Hall was a keen photographer with a special interest in train photography. He enjoyed travel and was a regular visitor to many universities around the world. He died of leukaemia in Melbourne on 9 January 2016. He is survived by his wife, Jeannie.