An Interview With Peter Rousseeuw

Abstract

SummaryPeter J. Rousseeuw is a statistician known mainly for his work on robust statistics and cluster analysis. Among his creations are least trimmed squares regression, the minimum covariance determinant estimator, the partitioning around medoids clustering method and the silhouettes graphical display. Peter obtained his PhD in 1981 following research carried out at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, which led to a book on influence functions. Later, he was a professor at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, and at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Next, he was a researcher at Renaissance Technologies in New York for over a decade. He then returned to Belgium as a full professor at KU Leuven, until becoming emeritus in 2022. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association. In the course of his career, Peter published three books and over 200 papers, together receiving over 100 000 citations. He was awarded the George Box Medal for Business and Industrial Statistics, the Research Medal of the International Federation of Classification Societies, the Frank Wilcoxon Prize, and twice the Jack Youden Prize. Recently, Peter received the 2024 ASA Noether Distinguished Scholar Award for nonparametric statistics. His former PhD students include Annick Leroy, Rik Lopuhaä, Geert Molenberghs, Christophe Croux, Mia Hubert, Stefan Van Aelst, Tim Verdonck and Jakob Raymaekers. He is the creator and sole sponsor of the Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics, which was first handed out by the King of Belgium in 2022.