IU STATISTICS PROFESSOR RANKED FOURTH IN WORLD IN PUBLICATIONS

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Madan L. Puri, professor of mathematics at Indiana University, has been ranked the fourth most prolific statistician in the world for his writings in the top statistical journals in a recent report titled "Statistics on Statistics: Worldwide Performance Based on Journal Publications in the Period 1985-1995." The survey, an update of an earlier one in 1992, was again conducted on behalf of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Puri was ranked ninth in the world in the 1992 survey.

One of the most versatile researchers in statistics and related fields, Puri has co-written two advanced research monographs, edited nine research volumes and written more than 200 published research articles on diverse topics in statistics, probability and mathematics. Among statisticians in universities such as IU which do not have separate departments of statistics, Puri is ranked number one in the world.

His research at IU has been supported by several federal agencies, totaling more than $1.2 million. He has given invited talks as well as keynote addresses at many international and national conferences and has held visiting and guest professorships at several universities, including Auckland, New Zealand; Berne, Switzerland; Goteborg, Sweden; Gottingen, Aachen, Dortmund and Hamburg, Germany; Lille, France; New South Wales, Australia; Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; the University of California at Irvine; and the University of Washington.

He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1962. In 1975, Punjab University in India awarded him a Doctor of Science degree. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association, and the Royal Statistical Society, and he is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

Puri twice received the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and he was honored by the German government "in recognition of past achievements in research and teaching." He was invited by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences to visit Japan under its Visiting Professorship Program, to conduct cooperative research with Japanese scientists.

In 1991, he was a Distinguished Visitor in the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London, England, where his visit was sponsored by the Suntory-Toyota International Center for Economics and Related Disciplines.

He also has served as chief editor of the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference.

He was invited by the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C., to participate in the project "A Framework for Planning U.S. Federal Statistics, 1978-1989," by reviewing and commenting on materials of particular interest.

In 1996, Puri was presented with a book, Research Developments in Probability and Statistics: Festschrift in honor of Madan L. Puri on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. The book's editors, professors Manfred Denker and Edgar Brunner of the University of Gottingen, Germany, traveled to Bloomington to present the book in a ceremony in the IU Department of Mathematics. Fifty-two authors around the world wrote articles for the book in Puri's honor.

"It was our intention to illustrate the wide spectrum of scientific interest which characterizes his scientific activity," the editors wrote in the book's preface. "The choice of papers offered combines fundamental principles with interesting applications selected for their originality and insight, and for their influence on the modern approach to statistics, probability and related fields."

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