Selected recollections of my relationship with Leo Breiman

TL;DR

This paper shares personal recollections of the author's professional relationship with Leo Breiman, highlighting collaborations, departmental decisions, and personal experiences in academia during the 1960s.

Contribution

It provides a personal historical account of Leo Breiman's role in academic hiring and collaboration in probability and statistics during the 1960s.

Findings

Leo Breiman influenced hiring decisions at UCLA.

Collaborated with Sidney Port on probability topics.

Personal insights into academic life in the 1960s.

Abstract

During the period 1962--1964, I had a tenure track Assistant Professorship in Mathematics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where I did research in probability theory, especially on linear diffusion processes. Being somewhat lonely there and not liking the cold winter weather, I decided around the beginning of 1964 to try to get a job in the Mathematics Department at UCLA, in the city in which I was born and raised. At that time, Leo Breiman was an Associate Professor in that department. Presumably, he liked my research on linear diffusion processes and other research as well, since the department offered me a tenure track Assistant Professorship, which I happily accepted. During the Summer of 1965, I worked on various projects with Sidney Port, then at RAND Corporation, especially on random walks and related material. I was promoted to Associate Professor, effective in Fall, 1966, presumably thanks in part to Leo. Early in 1966, I~was surprised to be asked by Leo to participate in a department meeting called to discuss the possible hiring of Sidney. The conclusion was that Sidney was hired as Associate Professor in the department, as of Fall, 1966. Leo communicated to me his view that he thought that Sidney and I worked well together, which is why he had urged the department to hire Sidney. Anyhow, Sidney and I had a very fruitful and enjoyable collaboration in probability and, to a much lesser extent, in theoretical statistics, for a number of years thereafter.