Herman Chernoff

I recently learned from a blog comment that Herman Chernoff passed away last week at the age of 103. He was born the same year as my dad. I first met Chernoff–it’s not like he was a particularly formal guy, but I can’t imagine calling him “Herman”–when I was a student at MIT. I’d taken a statistics course and really liked it, and I wanted to know what class to take next. The instructor, Stephan Morgenthaler, recommended I ask Chernoff, who in turn told me that MIT didn’t have much to offer in that area so I should take a course at Harvard. Which I did. Then a year later I enrolled in Harvard’s statistics program, and Chernoff had moved there too. That year I signed up for his theoretical statistics course. It pretty much covered what I’d already seen in earlier classes, and it was offered at some early morning hour (8:30, perhaps) so I don’t think I actually attended any lectures after the first week of classes. Chernoff was very mellow about this–he didn’t give me a hard time, and he…