Jerome S. Sacks, 91, passed away peacefully January 2, 2023. He was born on May 8, 1931, in the Bronx.

Jerry was a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and earned his BA (1952) and PhD (1956) in mathematics from Cornell University, with Jack Kiefer as his adviser. From 1956 to 1961, he had positions at the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and Cornell, at which point he moved to Northwestern University as associate and then full professor. He stayed at Northwestern until 1984, with leaves at Rutgers University (1979–1981) and the National Science Foundation (1983–1984). Jerry moved to the University of Illinois in 1984, serving as head of the department of statistics until 1990. In 1991, he became the founding director of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences—located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina—and professor at the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University. When he retired from NISS in 2001, Jerry assumed full-time duties at Duke, becoming emeritus professor in 2005.

Jerry was a visionary as the first director of NISS, recognizing it was crucial for NISS to focus on broad interdisciplinary activities in research and education. The creation of NISS was recommended in the 1988 report Cross-Disciplinary Research in the Statistical Sciences, which was co-authored by Jerry and Ingram Olkin. The many dozens of postdocs at NISS were trained in this cross-disciplinary style of research and carried it into their professional lives.

The cross-disciplinary focus resulted in NISS becoming a melting pot, involving people from academia, industry, and government. Jerry was personally active in almost all facets of NISS and could often be found vocally contributing at the research group meetings and workshops happening at NISS. According to Alan Karr, associate director under Jerry and later director, “Jerry’s attention to quality and innovation was relentless, and has enabled NISS to thrive throughout its 32 years of existence.”

Jerry was also important to the creation of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI), which functioned as a sister institute to NISS for many years. At his retirement, NISS established the Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research in his honor, which has now been presented to 21 leading statistical scientists, including Jerry’s PhD student, the late Cliff Spiegelman.

Jerry had an exceptional research career. An enduring interest of his was design of experiments. Much of this work was with the late Don Ylvisaker, the most influential being the papers on design aspects of regression problems; these started in classical mathematical statistics and eventually came to include calibration, response surfaces, and computer experiments.

Jerry did outstanding work in a host of other areas, including ecological regression and voting rights, chemometrics, and environmental health. To learn more about this research and its evolution from mathematical statistics to interdisciplinarity, see “After 50+ Years in Statistics, an Exchange” (Statistical Science, Vol. 27, 308–318).

Jerry was recognized for his research by becoming a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association.

Sacks’ paper in 1989, “Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments” (Statistical Science, 4, 409-435), arguably initiated what is now a huge field that spans statistics, applied mathematical modeling, engineering, and many other disciplines. The field is called uncertainty quantification outside statistics and involves the interaction of computer models (or other complex models) with data, taking into account the many uncertainties inherent in the problem, including uncertainty in the computer models. (Of course, most statisticians interpret “uncertainty quantification” more generally.)

At NISS, Jerry made uncertainty quantification one of the central initiatives, studying highly complex scientific problems such as circuit optimization, traffic simulation, air pollution measurement, and automotive design using both experimental design strategies and computer models. This eventually resulted in a joint initiative in uncertainty quantification between the ASA and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) that involved interest groups, a new journal, and meetings. The first international conference in uncertainty quantification of the ASA/SIAM initiative was in 2012; recognizing his central role in founding the field, Jerry was one of two plenary speakers at the meeting. He remained active in uncertainty quantification research, participating extensively in SAMSI uncertainty quantification programs as late as 2019.

Jerry was also a major contributor to the advancement of the statistics discipline through structural changes. NISS (and SAMSI) were, of course, the major examples. Another was his stint at the NSF from 1983–1984 as director of the statistics program; he was able to significantly affect NSF support for statistics for the future. For his contributions to the advancement of the discipline, Jerry received the ASA Founders Award in 1998.

Jerry was a lover of arts, especially jazz. He had a keen wit and was a joy to be around. His kindness and generosity were legendary and endeared him to all who knew him. There will be an invited memorial session for Jerry at JSM 2023 in Toronto, which will allow opportunities to share memories of Jerry.

Predeceased by his wife, Karin, Jerry is survived by daughters Sophia Sacks and Monica Freeland (Ryan), grandchildren Roxanne and Elliot, niece Anne Greenberg and nephew Richard Sacks (Marcia), and partner Mary Ellen Bock (the renowned statistician). Services were private. Memorial contributions may be made in his name to Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104.