Herbert Aron David (1925-2014)

DAVID, REISS, FINCH, WERTHEIMER

Posted By: Mark Christian
Date: 7/20/2014 at 12:35:00

From Grandon Funeral and Cremation Care obituary, Ames, Story County, Iowa:

Herbert A. David - Professor of Statistics

Herbert Aron David, an internationally known mathematical statistician, who was Director and Head of the Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory and Department of Statistics from 1972 to 1984 and Emeritus Distinguished Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University, died July 14 in Columbia Maryland. He was 88. His death was from complications of Parkinson's disease.

Dr. David supervised 25 PhD students, was principal author of five books, and published over 125 articles in his career. His research and teaching in order statistics led to his best-known book, "Order Statistics" which went through three editions. His other accomplishments included serving as President of the Biometrics Society and as Editor of the journal, Biometrics. He retired from Iowa State in 1995, but continued to be active in academia, publishing fifteen articles on the history of statistics on topics ranging from biographies, to translations from early works by Euler and Gauss, to cataloguing first occurrences of statistical terms of art.

H. A. David was born in Berlin, Germany in 1925. He was the adopted only son of Jewish parents, Max and Betty David. He often spoke of his youth in Nazi Germany and shared vivid memories of Kristallnacht and the 1936 Olympics. In 1939, his parents secured sponsorship to immigrate to Sydney, Australia, where he attended high school, graduating top of his class in mathematics and physics. In that period he learned chess and played at a high level in state-wide competitions in New South Wales. Participating in Habonim, the Zionist youth movement in Australia, he met his wife-to-be Vera Reiss, whose family had emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1938. As he was considered to be an "enemy alien" in Australia, he was not allowed to join the Australian military, and so he went to college during the Second World War, majoring in mathematics at Sydney University. He moved to England for his graduate studies from 1949 to 1953, earning his PhD in Statistics at University College, London. He was married in 1950 in London. In 1953, he returned to Australia, first working for the government as an agricultural statistician and then as Senior Lecturer in statistics at Melbourne University. His only child, Alexander John was born in 1954 in Sydney. In 1957, he moved to the United States, taking a position as Professor of Statistics at Virginia Polytechnic University He lived in Blacksburg, Virginia from 1957 to 1964, and then in Chapel Hill, North Carolina until 1972 as Professor of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. In 1972, he moved to Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. He and Vera were strong supporters of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1970s. In both North Carolina and Iowa, they were active in the local Reform Jewish synagogues. In 1991 his Vera died, and after her death, he met his second wife, the former Ruth Finch. They were married from 1993 to 2011. She moved from the United Kingdom to Ames, and he continued on the Iowa State faculty until he retired at age 70. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2012, but continued to enjoy life in Ames, teaching chess to two architecture professors, and visiting local Iowa schools to share his experiences growing up in Nazi Germany. He moved to Columbia, MD in late 2013 to be closer to his son. He is survived by his son, his daughter-in-law, Susan Wertheimer David, and three grandchildren.

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