Wenxin Jiang and John Kolassa, assisted by Noam Tanner, Anat Tanner, Yodit Seifu, Shelby Haberman, and Jiping Wang
Martin Abba Tanner passed away peacefully in Evanston on January 2, after 20 years of fighting cancer. He is survived by his wife, Anat, and his son, Noam.
Tanner was born in 1957 in Highland Park, Illinois. He graduated from Ida Crown Jewish Academy in 1975 and earned a bachelors, master’s, and PhD from The University of Chicago. He became a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, first as an assistant professor (1982–1987) and then as an associate professor (1987–1990). He moved to the University of Rochester as a full professor and chair of the department of biostatistics (1990–1994). He joined Northwestern University in 1994 as a professor in the department of statistics and data science (previously the department of statistics). He was also a visiting associate professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel (Spring 1988), a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh (Summer 1992), and a visiting professor at the Australian National University (Summer 1995).
Tanner popularized Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods in Bayesian computation with his highly cited paper co-authored with Wing Hung Wong, “The Calculation of Posterior Distributions by Data Augmentation,” in the Journal of the American Statistical Association. The algorithm they invented was named “data augmentation,” which extended the popular expectation maximization algorithm from the realm of frequentist statistics to Bayesian statistics. In addition to his contributions to Bayesian statistics, Tanner contributed to fields such as biostatistics, statistical machine learning, ecological inference, and, more recently, forecasting of COVID-19.
In 1993, Tanner received the Mortimer Spiegelman Award, awarded annually to honor a statistician below the age of 40 who has made outstanding contributions to health statistics, especially public health statistics. He was a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and Royal Statistical Society. He served as editor of the Theory and Methods section of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 1999–2002. He had been a series editor of the Chapman & Hall/CRC Texts in Statistical Science since 1999. Tanner was a member of the ISI Highly Cited Researcher Database and recipient of the Continuing Education Excellence Award from the American Statistical Association.
Tanner authored or co-authored more than 120 papers and books, including a graduate-level textbook on Bayesian statistics titled Tools for Statistical Inference: Methods for the Exploration of Posterior Distributions and Likelihood Functions. He was beloved by his students and a well-respected colleague.
“Martin was tireless in promoting the careers of junior colleagues and generously took on administrative tasks that many would have delegated in order to keep department colleagues unburdened and able to focus on advancing their own research agendas,” said John Kolassa, former postdoc mentee, faculty colleague at Rochester, and visiting professor at Northwestern.
Kolassa continued, “He built biostatistics at Rochester into its own department and defended the interests of biostatistics faculty, students, and staff. He demonstrated the value of biostatistics to the University of Rochester Medical Center leadership and led the teaching and consulting activities that cemented biostatistics as a key discipline at Rochester. He worked tirelessly six days per week (but never on Saturday). Martin was a terrific mentor and friend.”
“Martin was a decisive consideration that led me to come to Northwestern. He was a great mentor, collaborator, colleague, and friend,” said Wenxin Jiang, a longtime former colleague of Tanner’s at Northwestern University.
Tanner’s impact extended well beyond the academy. “He was incredibly smart, generous, and kind. Even back then, I remember he was undergoing treatment for cancer,” said Yodit Seifu, a former postdoc mentored by Tanner. “It was heartbreaking to see him face such a serious illness at the peak of his career, but his courage throughout was truly inspiring. He was an inspiration to all of us. On a personal note, he also introduced me to my husband, for which I am forever grateful,” said Seifu.
“His professional contributions were well-known, and his exemplary conduct as a visibly observant Jewish faculty member honored all religious Jews,” said Shelby Haberman, who was both Tanner’s former teacher at The University of Chicago and a former colleague at Northwestern University.
While Tanner prized his research, cherished teaching his students, and treasured his religious practice, the role he held most dear was being a devoted husband and father. He will be missed by many people.
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