Greta Ljung
Greta Marianne Ljung, 82, former Boston University/MIT faculty member and principal scientist/statistician at AIR Worldwide, passed away peacefully in her home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on August 12, more than two and a half years after first being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Ljung was born to Ellen and Johannes Ljung in the small town of Jeppo in the western part of Finland. The country was at war with Russia at the time and one of her first memories was of Russian planes dropping bombs on a nearby town while the family covered the windows with blankets to prevent their home from being seen at night. The war years brought much hardship, but the country prevailed.
Ljung graduated from high school near the top of her class and later studied at Åbo Academy in Finland, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. Following her graduation, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, where she had the opportunity to work with statistician and econometrician Herman Wold.
She later earned a PhD in statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her adviser was the world-renowned statistician George E. P. Box. Their joint work resulted in several publications, including a 1978 Biometrika paper on a goodness-of-fit test for time series modeling—now often referred to as the Ljung-Box test. In 2016, she also became the co-author of the fifth edition of Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control, originally published by Box and Gwilym Jenkins in 1970. The importance of her published work is evidenced by more than 80,000 citations attributed to her by Google Scholar.
Ljung’s professional work included faculty positions at Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was later principal scientist and chief statistician at AIR Worldwide in Boston, where she led the development of probabilistic models to estimate potential economic losses from natural hazards such as hurricanes, tornadoes, hailstorms, and wildfires.
She was a longtime member of the American Statistical Association and served as president of its Boston Chapter, covering five New England states. She served on several editorial boards and many committees. She always cared about the education of the next generations—twice she kindly donated many of her statistics textbooks and reference books to the department of mathematical sciences at Bentley University to support students.
After retirement, Ljung did volunteer work for several nonprofit organizations, including Finlandia Foundation in Boston. Her other interests included traveling, art, antiques, and outdoor activities such as gardening, swimming, and hiking. She was a passionate gardener and a strong advocate for the use of native plants to promote biodiversity and benefit wildlife.
Ljung is survived by her husband, Bert Beander, who she met in 1973 when they were graduate students at the University of Wisconsin. Long hours waiting for computer output in the university’s computing center left plenty of time for conversation and led to a lifelong friendship and love between them.
She is also survived by her sister, Lisa-Teir Siltanen of Korsholm, Finland, and her brother, Stig Ljung of Ekenäs, Finland, as well as 10 nieces and nephews residing in Finland and Sweden. Her husband also had family in Sweden, and they made many trips to visit them over the years.
There will be a private burial at Westview Cemetery in Lexington, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute or Boston’s Finlandia Foundation.
Shoutir Kishore Chatterjee
Submitted by Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, Retired Centenary Professor of Statistics, University of Calcutta
The statistics community lost a luminary when Shoutir Kishore Chatterjee passed away on June 18, 2024, following a brief hospitalization at the age of 89. He leaves behind his son; daughter; two grandchildren; and numerous students, friends, and admirers. Chatterjee was associated with the department of statistics at Calcutta University for more than four decades and steered it as its captain for more than a quarter century.
He made significant contributions to promote quality and advance excellence in both teaching and research at Calcutta University and in statistics departments at other Indian universities. He left an indelible mark on the annals of statistics in India through numerous mentorship efforts and academic engagements. His research contributions to wide areas of statistical inference, along with their applications and uncanny devotion to foundations, inspired many.
A scholar par excellence, profound thinker, and scrupulous researcher, Chatterjee made seminal contributions to Stein-type sequential procedures in the multivariate set-up with nuisance-parameter–free performance. Subsequently, during his early research career, he delved into multivariate nonparametric inference methods, some carried out jointly with the late Pranab Kumar Sen.
Chatterjee’s genuine curiosity and ensuing research seamlessly moved into other territories. For example, multivariate nonparametric tests against restricted alternatives, multivariate tolerance sets via density estimation, estimation of variance components, change detection and semi-sequential tests, variable selection in discrimination problems, and multiple scores in nonparametric testing. Chatterjee took a keen interest in, and contributed to, areas such as general asymmetric factorial experiments in estimation of the optimum point on a response surface.
His lectures inspired successive generations of students to carry on conducting research as part of their career goals in several areas Chatterjee touched on. He guided and supervised the research work of several scholars toward their PhD degrees, most of whom went on to earn wide international recognition for their contributions to statistics. The areas of research leading to his students’ PhD dissertations covered aspects such as design and analysis of experiments, linear models, nonparametric and sequential inference, and the foundation of statistical inference.
Other than the PhD advisees whom he officially guided as a major adviser, Chatterjee energetically extended academic support to others, including his colleagues. He was invaluable as a resource to all who needed help.
Deeply engaged in statistical theory, Chatterjee also promoted statistics and its applications in various academic and other professional domains. For example, by taking part as the chair or member of university-wide committees and groups set up for such purposes. He guided activities of the Calcutta Statistical Association over a long time, served as its president, and served as the editor of the Calcutta Statistical Association Bulletin, a premier journal. He also served as a leader in organizing the Triennial Calcutta Symposium on Probability and Statistics, organized by the association with the department of statistics at Calcutta University.
Recognized by the University Grants Commission as a national lecturer, Chatterjee visited several universities in India and delivered short courses on advanced topics in their statistics departments. He was also instrumental in developing a modern curriculum in statistics at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
An embodiment of rectitude, Chatterjee acknowledged other’s accomplishments while remaining silent about his own. Firm in his convictions, he was soft spoken and would gracefully accommodate others’ views. He possessed profound knowledge of philosophy of religion and joined discussions on the subject regularly. Many of his colleagues, students, and friends sought his advice on complex problems in life—professional and personal. A tall man with simple manners, he always extended a helping hand and ear.
Chatterjee authored Statistical Thought: A Perspective and History, which bears ample evidence of his deep insight into and genuine concern for minute details regarding the development of statistical methods and their applications through centuries. His other publication, Human Development and its Quantification: A Holistic Approach, reflected his concern for the holistic concept of human development and urge to make use of statistical, data-oriented methods for analytical treatments of debatable—and perhaps not so mainstream—issues of the importance in life. A preprint version appeared in Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series B.
Chatterjee received many acknowledgements, awards, and accolades over the years for his scholastic accomplishments and human qualities. He presided over the Statistics Section of the Indian Science Congress in 1987, was awarded the Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of Calcutta, was selected as a national lecturer in statistics by the University Grants Commission from 1986–1987, and was selected as an Emeritus Scientist by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) from 1997–2000. Details about his life can be found in “A Conversation with Shoutir Kishore Chatterjee” in Statistical Science.
It is next to impossible to enumerate Chatterjee’s lengthy list of virtues. His impact on statistical research and education in India and abroad will be felt for years to come. He will be sadly missed by his numerous students, admirers, friends, and colleagues. He shared his wisdom freely—as direct beneficiaries, we all mourn his loss, and we miss him.
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