Marc Hallin
Submitted and translated from French by Pascal Massart
Marc Hallin, professor emeritus at the Université libre de Bruxelles, was honored recently with the Pierre-Simon de Laplace Prize.
A worldwide prominent figure of mathematical statistics and a worthy continuator of Lucien Le Cam, Hallin made fundamental contributions to the optimality of rank-based tests, local asymptotic normality properties, multivariate quantiles, and, recently, the theory of measure transportation.
Hallin excels in explaining deep results to a broad-spectrum audience in an intelligible way without lapsing into caricature. A distinctive feature of his activity is his interdisciplinary curiosity and his ability to create links between various fields. His network of international collaborators is impressively wide and his impact on our discipline is considerable. His scientific generosity, which has been appreciated by generations of students, and his investment in the service to the statistical community in general—the Société française de Statistique in particular—are outstanding.
Hallin, above all, is the embodiment of a humanistic approach to science that never waned throughout his long career.
Raghib Ali
Raghib Ali was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to the National Health Service and the COVID-19 response for the platinum jubilee-year queen’s birthday honors.
Ali is an honorary consultant in acute medicine at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and a senior clinical research associate in the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Prior to becoming an associate fellow in 2020, he was a Doll Fellow at Green Templeton, working as part of the medical teaching program. In 2022, he was appointed chief medical officer of Our Future Health.
Raghib said, “I am delighted to have been recognized in the Queen’s Birthday Honors for my clinical duties as a front-line NHS doctor at the John Radcliffe Hospital and my work helping us to understand the causes of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities, reducing those disparities and improving vaccine uptake.”
He continued, “I would never have imagined that one day I would be receiving such an award. As a child on free school meals attending one of the worst-performing primary schools in the country, my chances of becoming a doctor were almost zero and so I am very grateful for the opportunities I have had in my career to date and I hope this award will inspire children and young people across the country who find themselves in similarly difficult circumstances.”
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