Stephen Fienberg

Stephen Elliott Fienberg (27 November 1942 – 14 December 2016) was a Professor Emeritus (formerly the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science) in the Department of Statistics, the Machine Learning Department, Heinz College, and Cylab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Fienberg earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Toronto in 1964, a Master of Arts degree in Statistics in 1965, and a Ph.D. in Statistics in 1968 from Harvard University for research supervised by Frederick Mosteller

He was on the Carnegie Mellon University faculty from 1980, served as Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and became a U.S. citizen in 1998. He authored more than 400 publications, including six books, advised more than 30 Ph.D. students, and could claim more than 105 descendants in his mathematical genealogy.

Feinberg was one of the foremost social statisticians in the world, and was well known for his work in log-linear modeling for categorical data, the statistical analysis of network data, and methodology for disclosure limitation. He authored and coauthored books on categorical data analysis, US census adjustment, and forensic science. He was a founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality.

Selected publications

• Bishop, Y. M. M., Fienberg, S. E. and Holland, P. W. (1975). Discrete Multivariate Analysis: Theory and Practice. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA. Paperback edition (1977). A Citation Classic. Reprinted, by Springer-Verlag, New York (2007).
• Fienberg, S. E. and Hinkley, D. V., eds. (1980). R. A. Fisher: An Appreciation. Springer-Verlag, NY. 1st reprint 1989; 2nd reprint by Springer-Verlag, NY (2012).
• Fienberg, S. E. (1980). The Analysis of Cross-classified Categorical Data. 2nd Edition. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA. A Citation Classic. Reprinted, by Springer-Verlag, New York (2007).
• DeGroot, M. H., Fienberg, S. E., and Kadane, J. B., eds. (1986). Statistics and the Law. Wiley, New York. Wiley Classics Paperback edition (1994).
• Goldenberg, A., Zheng, A. X., Fienberg, S. E. and Airoldi, E. M. (2010) A Survey of Statistical Network Models. Now Publishers Inc.

Awards and honors

Fienberg was a recipient of the COPSS Presidents' Award, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a winner of its Wilks Award, and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He was selected to be the R. A. Fisher Lecturer in 2015. Fienberg was the winner of the 2015 NISS Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research,

Stephen Fienberg was married to Joyce Fienberg and had two sons, Anthony and Howard, and six grandchildren. He died on 14 December 2016.