Peter Anthony Lachenbruch (1937–2021)

Peter Anthony (Tony) Lachenbruch was a distinguished statistician, known especially for many contributions to biostatistics and outstanding services to the profession. His achievements have been noted in detail elsewhere. See particularly https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2015/02/01/peterlachenbruch_feb2015/and https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2022/03/01/obituaries-for-march-2022/.

Tony gained degrees in mathematics and statistics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Lehigh University, and UCLA again. He served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina, the University of Iowa, UCLA, and Oregon State University, with a lengthy interlude in senior roles at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He produced more than 200 papers and a monograph on discriminant analysis (Lachenbruch 1975). Tony received many awards and honors, including recognition from the American Public Health Association, the FDA, the American Statistical Association (of which he was president in 2008), the Biometric Society, and the International Statistical Institute. He remained active in retirement with membership of the editorial boards of Statistics in Medicine and Statistical Methods in Medical Research.

Here we also mark his contributions as a long-time user and friend of Stata. As Tony detailed in personal reminiscences (Lachenbruch 2005, 2015), he used Stata both personally and at work from 1985, an early adoption eased by the proximity of UCLA and the Stata company, Computing Resources Center, at that time. He stressed how useful Stata was, and is, as a framework for statistical computing and particularly how much he used it as an engine for simulations. Various short pieces in the Stata Technical Bulletin and the Stata Journal (which he joined in 2010 as an associate editor) grew out of his experience. An early tip (Lachenbruch 1992b) flags that—because the system missing value is regarded as arbitrarily large— if foo <. saves a keystroke over if foo !=.. That remains useful even though now we also have extended missing values. Many of those aware of this tip must have used it hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

I will close with a small personal story. I met Tony through Stata conferences in the United States, but the existence of the Atlantic meant that we interacted more through Statalist or email. He was thinning down his book collection at some point and, quite unsolicited, sent me a copy of A.L. Bowley’s Elements of Statistics from 1901 as a personal gift, remembering my interest in the history of statistics. That was a particularly kind and thoughtful gesture. I remember Tony fondly as someone in whom distinction and eminence remained coupled with a straightforward and friendly manner.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material, sj-zip-1-stj-10.1177_1536867X221106359 - Peter Anthony Lachenbruch (1937–2021)

Supplemental Material, sj-zip-1-stj-10.1177_1536867X221106359 for Peter Anthony Lachenbruch (1937–2021) by Nicholas J. Cox in The Stata Journal

Nicholas J. Cox