A Conversation With David Bellhouse

Abstract

David Richard Bellhouse was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on 19 July 1948. He studied actuarial mathematics and statistics at the University of Manitoba (BA, 1970; MA, 1972) and completed his PhD at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in 1975. After being an Assistant Professor for 1 year at his alma mater, he joined the University of Western Ontario in 1975, where he was a Staff Member in the Social Science Computing Laboratory before becoming an Assistant Professor of Statistics in 1977. He was tenured in 1982, promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1987, chaired his department from 1992 to 1999 and retired in 2016. He is the author or coauthor of eight books and over 100 research papers in survey sampling and in the history of probability and statistics. In addition to his methodological contributions, he did much collaborative work in fields such as archaeology, law and medicine. His acclaimed biographies of Thomas Bayes and Abraham De Moivre also brought to light many new facts about these pioneers. During his career, David supervised 45 MSc students, 4 PhD students and 2 postdoctoral fellows. He also served the community in various ways, notably as an Associate Editor for five different journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association (1983–1988) and Survey Methodology (1985–2006). Moreover, he was Secretary (1988–1990) and later President (1998–1999) of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC). He is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (1987), a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (1989) and an Honorary Member of the SSC (2017). Moreover, he received the University of Western Ontario Gold Medal for Excellence in Teaching (1985), the SSC Service Award (2003) and the 2017 University of Manitoba Faculty of Science Alumni Award. Since 2020, he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries of the United Kingdom.