Dr Radu Theodorescu, retired Adjunct Professor at Laval University, has been elected an Honorary Member of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC). This honour was announced at the Annual Meeting of the Society in Ottawa, on June 5, 2000.
Radu Theodorescu was born in Bucarest (Romania) on April 12, 1933. He completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics (honours in probability and statistics) in 1954 at the University of Bucarest. He immediately joined the Probability and Statistics Research Group at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. He then began work on a doctoral thesis on multivariate-time Markov processes, which he defended successfully in 1958.
After his studies, Theodorescu remained with the Institute for six years, serving as Scientific Secretary from 1960. That year, he also won the Mathematics Prize of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. In 1964, he became the founding Director of the Industrial Statistics Section of the newly created Centre of Mathematical Statistics of the Academy, a position which he occupied until 1968. A highly prolific researcher, Theodorescu was awarded in 1967 the title of Doctor Docent, the Romanian equivalent of the German Habilitation or the former French “doctorat d’état.” During this period, he also taught numerous mathematics, probability and statistics courses at the University of Bucarest.
Theodorescu was hired as a professor by the University of Bucarest in 1968, but immediately took a leave of absence to accept a one-year visiting position in the Department of Mathematics at Laval University. He was offered a full professorship at Laval the following year and taught probability and statistics there until his retirement, in April 1999.
Always very active in research, Theodorescu contributed significantly to the development and reputation of the probability and statistics group at Laval. Author or co-author of more than 160 scientific papers published in English, French, German, Russian or Romanian, he also published 13 joint textbooks and research monographs in probability theory, mathematical statistics, stochastic processes, game theory and information theory, including Random Processes and Learning (1969, Springer, with M. Iosifescu), Concentration Functions (1973, Academic Press, with W. Hengartner) and Unimodality of Probability Measures (1997, Kluwer, with E. Bertin and I. Cuculescu).
During his 31 active years in Quebec City, Theodorescu supervised 20 Master’s students (including B. Rémillard) and 5 Ph.D. students (B. Abdous, J.-R. Boudreau, R. Nadeau, R. KandriRody, M. N’zi). His excellence in teaching and research was recognized on many occasions during his career. In particular, he was coopted an Ordinary Member of the International Statistical Institute (1969) and was elected fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1986) and of the American Society for Quality (1989). In 1999, he also became an honorary member of the Societatea de probabilitati si statistica din România, the Romanian analogue of the SSC.
Son and grandson of a medical doctor, married to Anca Florescu and later to Marie-Josée Michiels, Radu Theodorescu is the father of Dan, Paul and Anne, aged 38, 15 and 13, respectively. The eldest is an Associate Professor of urology at the University of Virginia. A friendly and humble man, Radu has many interests beside science; he is an avid reader, a music lover with strong interest in opera, as well as a stamp and coin collector. His colleagues salute his nomination to Honorary Membership in the SSC, an organization that he joined at its inception, and that he has served in many ways.
Submitted by Christian Genest