This symposium is dedicated to
the memory and legacy of our
colleague, mentor, and friend,
Professor Larry Shepp
(1936-2013)
Larry Shepp was one of the world's leading experts in the field of optimal stopping and in applied probability in general. He received the B.S. degree in applied mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1958, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Princeton University in 1960 and 1961, respectively, under the supervision of William Feller. He joined the Mathematics Research Center of AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1962 and became a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in 1986. He was a Professor of Statistics and Operations Research at Columbia University from 1996 to 1997. In 1997, he joined the Department of Statistics at Rutgers University, where he served as Board of Governor's Professor from 2004-2009. In 2009, he became the Patrick T. Harker Professor of Statistics at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
During his career at AT&T, he held various joint appointments: he was a Professor of Radiology at Columbia University from 1973 to 1996, a Mathematician in Radiology Service at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from 1974 to 1996, and a Professor of Statistics (1/4 time) at Stanford University from 1978 to 1992. He was a member of the Scientific Boards of American Science and Engineering Inc. from 1974 to 1975 and of Resonex Inc. from 1983 to 1984. Shepp spent extended visiting periods at many places including the Mittag-Leffler Institute, MIT, the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, and he was an exchange scholar at the Steklov Institute in Moscow for 6 months in 1966.
Shepp is best known in the optimal stopping community for his breakthrough work on foundational Chow-Robbins problems of optimal stopping and for inventing the ``Russian option,'' which is widely used on Wall Street for the lookback hedge option guaranteeing the discounted maximum price to the buyer. In addition to his fundamental contributions to optimal stopping and stochastic control, Shepp made fundamental contributions to CAT scanning, emission tomography, probability theory (random covering, Gaussian processes, connectedness of random graphs), mathematical finance and economics.
Shepp was Co-Editor for the Wiley International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, and was an Associate Editor for Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography from 1977 to 1992. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1989, the National Academy of Medicine in 1992, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.
During his career at AT&T, he held various joint appointments: he was a Professor of Radiology at Columbia University from 1973 to 1996, a Mathematician in Radiology Service at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from 1974 to 1996, and a Professor of Statistics (1/4 time) at Stanford University from 1978 to 1992. He was a member of the Scientific Boards of American Science and Engineering Inc. from 1974 to 1975 and of Resonex Inc. from 1983 to 1984. Shepp spent extended visiting periods at many places including the Mittag-Leffler Institute, MIT, the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, and he was an exchange scholar at the Steklov Institute in Moscow for 6 months in 1966.
Shepp is best known in the optimal stopping community for his breakthrough work on foundational Chow-Robbins problems of optimal stopping and for inventing the ``Russian option,'' which is widely used on Wall Street for the lookback hedge option guaranteeing the discounted maximum price to the buyer. In addition to his fundamental contributions to optimal stopping and stochastic control, Shepp made fundamental contributions to CAT scanning, emission tomography, probability theory (random covering, Gaussian processes, connectedness of random graphs), mathematical finance and economics.
Shepp was Co-Editor for the Wiley International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, and was an Associate Editor for Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography from 1977 to 1992. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1989, the National Academy of Medicine in 1992, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.