Clifford H. Spiegelman, Regents Professor and Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Texas A&M University and a leader in statistical and environmental forensics, passed away May 14, 2020, in College Station at the age of 71.
“Cliff was a person who voluntarily helped others,” said Texas A&M statistician Samiran Sinha. “He was there whenever the department needed someone, whether in presenting the department at the college level, talking with other departments, or improving or restructuring courses. I communicated with him last week regarding a paper review. He was truly a helpful person.”
Spiegelman was appointed in 2009 as a distinguished professor of statistics, Texas A&M’s highest honorific rank for faculty. He was designated a Regents Professor for 2018–2019 in recognition of his exemplary contributions to the Texas A&M University System and people of Texas. A senior research scientist with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, he had served since 2017 as the inaugural official statistician of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission as well as the statistical adviser to the Texas Forensic Science Commission. For many years, he also was the key statistical advisor to the City of Houston’s crime lab.
Throughout his four-decade career, Spiegelman used his vast knowledge of statistics and forensic science to help free innocent people, reevaluate history, and develop sharper analytical tools for society. In perhaps the most visible and pioneering example, his expertise was key as a member of a National Research Council committee charged with evaluating the effectiveness of comparative bullet lead analysis, a forensic method most notably used in the investigation of the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. He was instrumental in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2005 decision to stop using the widespread technique after he demonstrated it to be fundamentally flawed. He also took part in a related study that determined the same for evidence used to rule out a second shooter in the Kennedy assassination—work recognized with the 2008 American Statistical Association’s Statistics in Chemistry Award.
“Cliff’s passion was good and irrefutable statistical methodology in the absence of classical experimental design,” said Texas A&M statistician and interim head of Texas A&M Statistics, Daren B.H. Cline. “He was a public face for statistics who demonstrated the relevance of our field to society and the importance of proper techniques and precise application.”
A native of Long Island, Spiegelman earned a bachelor’s in economics, math, and statistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970 and both his master’s in managerial economics and doctorate in statistics and applied mathematics at Northwestern University in 1973 and 1976, respectively. Prior to joining Texas A&M, he spent nine years in the National Bureau of Standards Statistical Engineering Division (the present-day National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Gaithersburg (1978–1987), following one year as an assistant professor of statistics at Florida State University (1976–1977). He also held visiting faculty appointments at Northwestern (1982–1983), The Johns Hopkins University (1986–1987), and Lamar University (1993–1996).
In addition to higher education, Spiegelman served as an adjunct investigator in the Biostatistics Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Division of Cancer Epidemiology Genetics (2005–2008) and as a consultant for the NCI Proteomics Program (2005–2009). For the past six years, he spent his summers in Washington, DC, working with collaborators at the National Agricultural Statistics Service (2014–2019).
Spiegelman was a founder of the field of chemometrics, the science of using data to extract information from chemical systems by data-driven means to investigate and address problems in chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering. In 2017, the international journal he co-founded, Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, celebrated his 30-plus years of service to both the publication and the discipline he helped create with a virtual special issue in his honor. An active researcher and scholar, Spiegelman authored more than 200 refereed publications that have appeared in the Annals of Statistics and at least 20 other statistics journals. He also contributed to five books and dozens of conference proceedings, reviews, and editorials.
One of Spiegelman’s lifelong passions was using statistics to achieve justice for everyday citizens. For many years, he worked with judges and attorneys to broaden their understanding of statistics and the critical effect it often has on case outcomes and broader issues at hand. At the time of his death, he was working with colleagues and US legislators to introduce potential bipartisan legislation that would enter existing forensic evidence collected at crime scenes during the civil rights era into forensic databases. He strongly believed such a watershed move would help pave the way for countless decades-long cold cases potentially to be solved.
Spiegelman was a fellow of the American Statistical Association (1992), Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1990), and American Association for the Advancement of Science (2014), as well as an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (1993). A two-time recipient of the ASA Statistics in Chemistry Award for best paper, he also received the 2007 Jerome Sacks Award for Outstanding Cross-Disciplinary Research recognizing innovation in statistical science and the San Antonio Chapter of the ASA’s 2016 Don Owen Award for excellence in research, contributions to editorial activities, and service to the statistical community. Most recently, he was honored with the Texas A&M chapter of Sigma Xi’s 2019 Outstanding Science Communicator Award.
“Cliff was a great colleague and a truly outstanding statistician,” said Texas A&M statistician Jeffrey D. Hart. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as dedicated to his/her profession than was Cliff. He will be sorely missed.”
To read more about Spiegelman’s life, visit the Texas A&M news website. A tribute page, “Remembering Dr. Clifford Spiegelman,” has also been set up in his honor at the Innocence Project.
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