Leonard Jimmie Savage

"My dissertation for the Ph.D. degree at the University of Michigan was on applications of vectorial methods to metric geometry (in the sense of the Menger school), especially with a view to the merging of metric geometry in that sense with differential geometry. Professor S B Myers at the University of Michigan sponsored my dissertation, but I was particularly close to R L Wilder there."

"For a person who wants to do original, realistic, and critical work in statistics there is no atmosphere anywhere in the world today to compare with this Department."

"[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics."

"[Leonard Jimmie Savage is] one of the few people I have met whom I would unhesitatingly call a genius."

"R. A. Fisher, J. Neyman, R. von Mises, W. Feller, and L. J. Savage denied vehemently that probability theory is an extension of logic, and accused Laplace and Jeffreys of committing metaphysical nonsense for thinking that it is."

"It was only when L. J. Savage arrived on the scene, and championed the work of Ramsey and de Finetti that the work of these two pioneers in subjective probability first received serious philosophical attention."