Jagdish N. Srivastava (JNS), a professor emeritus of statistics at
Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins will be remembered for
his leadership in statistics profession; his thought provoking,
penetrating and deeper questions at the professional meetings and
conferences; and his pioneering research contributions in design of
experiments as well as in multivariate analysis, survey sampling,
reliability, coding theory, combinatorial theory, and many other areas
of statistics and mathematics.
The 1973 conference “Statistical Design and Analysis of Experiments and Linear Models”
organized by him in Fort Collins started a new era of statistical design
by bringing together leaders from different areas of statistics and with different interests
covering many theoretical as well as applied areas and demonstrating
that both “good” design and “efficient” inference are fundamental for
extracting the pertinent information from the data collected for
scientific investigations. With this spirit, JNS founded the Journal of
Statistical Planning and Inference (JSPI) in 1975 with the cooperation
and support from the distinguished statisticians from all over the
world. During this period, he introduced “search linear models and
search designs” his ground breaking research. His Ph.D. advisor
Professor R.C. Bose was a CSU faculty after his retirement in 1971 from
the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. Professor Bose
remarked in several occasions that his student JNS now truly surpassed
him, the recognition of a great mind and a highly spirited advisor. As
a Ph.D. student and a post doctoral researcher at UNC, JNS worked also
with Professor S.N. Roy, another great mind and an outstanding
individual. JNS was also inspired by Professors R.A. Fisher, J. Neyman,
P.C. Mahalanobis, C.R. Rao, J. Kiefer, and H. Chernoff. In design
theory, JNS developed the mathematical theory of confounding for
asymmetrical factorial experiments (with Professor K. Kishen), optimum
balanced designs for fractional factorial experiments, introducing and
studying balanced arrays and multidimensional partially balanced
association schemes, leading to the non-commutative algebra of Bose and
Srivastava, which is a multi-set generalization of the Bose-Mesner
algebra; created the new and influential fields of search linear models
and search designs and its application in fractional factorial
experiments as well as in figuring out non-additivity presence in
row-column designs. In multivariate analysis, he worked on MANOVA with
complete as well as incomplete data in estimation, hypothesis testing,
classification, and meta-analysis;
and a monograph on design and analysis of quantitative multi-response
experiments jointly with Professors S.N. Roy and R. Gnanadesikan. In
reliability theory, JNS introduced self-relocating designs (SRD) for
comparative experiments. In survey-sampling, JNS introduced a general
class of estimators with almost all of the well-known estimators as the
special cases. In coding theory, he introduced “Srivastava-code”, a
class of parameterized error-correcting codes.
JNS studied quantum mechanics and mathematical logic. Gödel's theorem
inspired him to realize the limitations of science. He slowly turned
toward spirituality and studied the great religions of the world. He
was particularly drawn to the Bhagavad-Gita because of his nonsectarian
outlook. This interest led him to obtain his 1991 joint appointment in
the philosophy department of CSU where he had been a professor of
statistics and mathematics since 1966.
JNS was an elected fellow of ASA, IMS; an elected member of ISI; a
foundation fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and Applications;
and a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He was the
past presidents of the Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics as well
as the International Indian Statistical Association (IISA). He had
collaborated with many researchers around the world and mentored many
Ph.D. students in the CSU statistics department.
JNS is survived by his wife of sixty years Usha, son Arvind, daughter
Gita and son-in-law Roy; son Ashok, daughter-in-law Lynn and
granddaughter Leela.
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Subir Ghosh, Professor of Statistics, University of California,
Riverside
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