Ky Fan, the famous Chinese American Mathematician who's known to few Chinese people

Ky Fan (1914-2010) was a Chinese American mathematician whose accompolishments could be compared to other famous Chinese mathematicians such as Pao-Lu Hsu (1910-1970),   S. S. Chern (陈省身, 1911-2004, American mathematician and then retired in China) and L.K. Hua (华罗庚, 1910-1985). His research areas and interests were in more practical areas such as matrix theory and minimax theorems which have a lot of applications in economics and statistics. His story of not being able to return to China's Peking University to teach after the Second World War was very sad and unfortunate for China's mathematics developments, but on the other hand, it was exactly due to his stay in the US during the subsequent period that he became  a major player in modern mathematics as mathematics saw rapid developments in such areas such as game theory, statistics and operation research, in which Ky Fan made a lot of contributions following the footsteps of Jon von Neumann and Hermann Weyl. He was a student and collaborator of M Frechet and they co-authored a book in 1946: Introduction a la Topologie Combinatoire. (Its English translation was published in 1967 and recently reissued by Dover under the title: Invitation to Combinatorial Topology.)

Ky Fan's work was characterized by its wide influence in many areas, and was widely cited and studied by other researchers, see for example references 1, 2, 3. His results were quoted as classic theorems in many textbooks. His practical interests were probably maintained by his frequent visits during 1947-1960 to national laboratories such as the National Bureau of Standards, see ref.4.

Ky Fan was born in Hangzhou, China on September 19, 1914. He enrolled in Peking University in 1932, and received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 1936. Fan went to France in 1939 and received his D.Sc. under Frechet from the University of Paris in 1941. A member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1945 to 1947, he then joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame, eventually becoming full professor. In 1965, Fan became professor of mathematics at UC Santa Barbara, retiring in 1985.

Fan was elected an Academician of the Academia Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan) in 1964. Fan served as the director of the Institute of Mathematics there from 1978 to 1984.

A short biography of Ky Fan is given in Ref.5. A nice Chinese article about him was written by his last student, ref.6.

1. Ky Fan Inequalities: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1108/1108.1467v2.pdf
2. On a Minimax Inequality of Ky Fan. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2046475
3. On the Ky Fan Inequality and Related Inequalities II. http://www.austms.org.au/Publ/Bulletin/V72P1/pdf/721-5068-NeSa.pdf
4. Some Metric Inequalities in the Space of Matrices. http://www.ams.org/journals/proc/1955-006-01/S0002-9939-1955-0067841-7/S0002-9939-1955-0067841-7.pdf
5. Every Waking Moment Ky Fan (1914-2010): http://www.ams.org/notices/201011/rtx101101444p.pdf
6. 记恩师樊畿教授 http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-05-17/110213011025.shtml

Wither Mathematical Statistics?

Herbert Robbins wrote (or talked) a nice reflection on the state of mathematical statistics in 1975, published a paper under this title in Advances of Applied Probability, Vol.7. This was probably at the end of golden years of theoretical statistics, some of this history also captured nicely in the very entertaining book by E.L. Lehmann, Reminiscences of a Statistician: the Company I Kept, published by Springer 2008. Mathematical statistics (ms) probably came out of the need to provide the rigor and theory for data analysis and data collection in the period of agricultural boom in the hands of R.A. Fisher, E.S. Pearson, Jerzy Neyman, etc, and was probably well justified to boom right after demonstrating its usefulness during the second world war along with the birth of operation research. But this inward-looking and self-indulged developments, though productive, probably the golden years in statistics, but by 1975, the initial excitement seemed to have run out of steam and it is in need of new air and fresh ideas. It is interesting to the reflections  from one of the major figures in modern statistics on the future of  ms at the time. He is probably not alone, as John W. Tukey had said the same thing earlier many times, such as in the earth-shaking article: The Future of Data Analysis, published in 1962, Annals of Mathematical Statistics. Apparrently there had been a disconnect between the development of mathematical statistics and data analysis. That was bad, as mathematical statistics was supposed to help "doing data analysis", not being done as another branch of mathematics.  This was an unfortunate development, since its founding fathers like Harold Hotelling and Abraham Wald, among others, many of whom have both applied roots such as economics but would like to see statistics as an integral but independent component of the scientific discipline, not just a subdiscipline sitting within a mathematics department. Ironically, whether it is C. Stein's breakthroughs or systematic efforts such as the 1970s robustness studies, they all proved  that the optimality of statistical procedures is more an illusion than something can be achieved remotely in practice. Now in the new century, the tide has completely changed with the waves of problems in biology and medicine such as imaging and if statisticians cannot face up to the task of the new digital era, and many others such as engineers and computer scientists will gladly do the work instead. Today it will be surprising to find any modern statistician who is not involved in some kinds of real application areas, whether climate, environment or clinical trials. Statisticians nowdays need to know more than a few areas, including many statistical methodologies  and theories, so that,  when faced with a consulting problem from a scientist colleague, they do not have to take on Robbins' advice of following the Hippocratic Oath and do no harm, they can actually make inroads into some potentially new areas.

References:
1.J. W. Tukey (1962), The Future of Data Analysis, Annals of Mathematical Statistics.
2. 陈希孺: 数理统计学:世纪末的回顾与展望, 统计研究, 2000 年第2 期.

关于我国数理统计学发展中存在的问题的几点思考, 北京统计, 2003年.