Person: Hájek, Jaroslav
Jaroslav Hájek was a Czech mathematician who worked in theoretical and nonparametric statistics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- After the German armies took Prague, Hájek was forced to work for the German armament industry.
- In 1947, although only two years into his undergraduate course, Hájek began teaching as an Assistant Lecturer in the Mathematics Institute at the Czech Technical University where he studied.
- This first publication by Hájek was on the subject of sampling surveys.
- The name "Hájek predictor" now labels his contributions to the use of auxiliary data in estimating population means.
- Hájek's secondary school education had been disrupted by the war but this was not the end of the disruption to his career for after receiving his Diplom he had to spend two years doing military service.
- For twelve year Hájek worked as a Senior Research Worker in the Mathematical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
- There Lucien Le Cam was the Chairman of the Department and, despite the pressures of that role preventing him from doing as much work with Hájek as he would have liked, it was still a very useful visit.
- In 1962 Hájek wrote Asymptotically most powerful rank order tests which deals with contiguity.
- Hájek developed the property of sequences of pairs of probability measures from ideas due to de la Vallée Poussin.
- Both Hájek and Le Cam used the concept but the name 'contiguity' is due to Le Cam.
- As well as Berkeley, Hájek also made long visits to Michigan State University in East Lansing and to Florida State University in Tallahassee.
- Back in Prague Hájek submitted his habilitation dissertation on statistical problems in stochastic processes and was awarded the qualification.
- In 1967 Hájek published (jointly with Z Sidak) Theory of rank tests but it was a work which had in fact been written four years before in 1963.
- Hájek's health was poor for many years as he suffered from a kidney disease.
- Hájek realised that the conference would be his last opportunity to meet many of his friends and colleagues and indeed it proved to be the case as he died from the kidney disease several months later.
- We should mention two further books by Hájek.
Born 4 February 1926, Podebrady, Bohemia (now Czech Republic). Died 10 June 1974, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Czech Republic
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
