IMS Fellow Marc Hallin, professor emeritus at the Université libre de Bruxelles, was honored recently with the Pierre-Simon de Laplace Prize, the highest scientific distinction awarded by the French Statistical Society (Société française de Statistique, SfS). It is awarded every three years. 

Pascal Massart writes, “A prominent figure of mathematical statistics worldwide, and a worthy perpetuator of Lucien Le Cam’s work, Marc Hallin has made fundamental contributions to the optimality of rank-based tests, local asymptotic normality properties, multivariate quantiles, and, recently, the theory of measure transportation. Hallin excels in explaining deep results to a broad-spectrum audience in an intelligible way without lapsing into caricature. A distinctive feature of his activity is his interdisciplinary curiosity and his ability to create links between various fields. His network of international collaborators is impressively wide and his impact on our discipline is considerable. His scientific generosity, which has been appreciated by generations of students, and his investment in the service to the statistical community in general—the Société française de Statistique in particular—are outstanding. Hallin, above all, is the embodiment of a humanistic approach to science that never waned throughout his long career.”

The prize recognizes Marc Hallin’s outstanding academic career in the Department of Mathematics, the Institute of Statistics, and the European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics at the University of Brussels (ULB). 

Prof. Marc Hallin is an Elected member of the International Statistical Institute, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the American Statistical Association, Member of the Classe des Sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium. He has received several distinctions, including the Medal of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague. He is the author of over 220 papers in the Annals of Statistics, Bernoulli, JASA, the Journal of Econometrics, and JRSS B, and the former co-Editor-in-Chief of the ISI flagship journal International Statistical Review. His research interests are in mathematical statistics, particularly semiparametric and rank-based inference, statistical depth, quantile-oriented models, and measure transportation. He has also made significant contributions in time series and time series econometrics, with special focus on factor models in the analysis of high-dimensional time series.

The Pierre-Simon de Laplace Prize will be awarded to him at the annual colloquium of the French Statistical Society to be held next June in Lyon. Previous winners include Luc Devroye (McGill) in 2019, Emmanuel Candès (Stanford) in 2016, and Christian Gouriéroux (CREST and Toronto) in 2013.