Anant M Kshirsagar

Dr. Anant Madhav Kshirsagar, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biostatistics, School of Health Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, died on June 20, 2023, at Ann Arbor. His career was exceptional from the beginning. He passed his matriculation examination at the age of 12 from Sangli, a small town in Maharashtra, India. At the age of 16, he passed his BSc in Mathematics from Fergusson College, Pune, and stood “First Class First” in Bombay University. While he was a postgraduate student at Bombay University, the head of the statistics department Professor Chakravarti recognized the potential of this student who came from a family of very modest economic background in a small town, and encouraged him to fulfill his strong ambition to reach greater heights in the field of Statistics.

He completed his PhD (1961) in just one and a half years under the guidance of M.S. Bartlett, who had done pioneering work on multivariate analysis, at Manchester University, UK. After working briefly as faculty in the Statistics Department of Bombay University and as a senior scientific officer in the Defence Science Organisation, Delhi, he moved to the USA in 1968 to work as an Associate Professor at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas (1968–71). He was invited by Prof. Hartley in 1971 to work as a professor at Texas A&M University, College Station (1971–77), then joined the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Health Sciences of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he remained until retirement, becoming Professor Emeritus.

In1972 he was awarded a DSc by Manchester University for his sustained publication record after PhD and quality of research. Even when Kshirsagar was a PhD student, Maurice had great confidence in his knowledge and judgment. Once, Bartlett was asked by Biometrika’s editor to referee a paper submitted by a very senior Statistics professor from Harvard University; Bartlett instructed them to “send it to my student Kshirsagar.” Dr. Kshirsagar found a serious flaw in it, and gave his opinion that it should not be published. Biometrika accepted his decision. (Knowing this, Kshirsagar’s student J.N.K. Rao, used to call Kshirsagar “a giant-killer.”)

Books written by Prof. Kshirsagar on multivariate analysis, growth curves, and linear models have been widely used by students and teachers in American universities. Design of experiments, Markov renewal processes, response surfaces, discriminant analysis, and linear models were other areas of his specialization.

When C.R. Rao, doyen of Indian statistics, was to publish a revised edition of his book Statistics, called him and asked, “Kshirsagar, in your book, on which page have you given a simple proof of one of my statistics and called it ‘Rao’s U-statistic’?”. Rao also recommended in his book that readers should refer to Kshirsagar’s book for derivation of distribution.

Excellent researchers are not necessarily good teachers but Kshirsagar was an exception to this. When he was about to leave SMU to join Texas A&M, his SMU students pleaded with the Dean to give Kshirsagar tenure or a raise.

Two of his former students, Dr. Mason, who later became ASA President, and Dr. Eubank, wrote in the preface of their book, “Credit for all that we have done so far in the field of Statistics goes to the teaching of Prof. Kshirsagar.” Another two former students, Luisa Sia and Ersen Arseven, instituted in 2010 the “Anant M. Kshirsagar Endowed Fellowship in Statistics” at Texas A&M University. The School of Public Health, University of Michigan, also instituted the “Kshirsagar/Wolfe Endowed Scholarship” in his honor.

Despite spending half of his life in the US, he had retained a great love for literature in Marathi, his mother tongue and whenever he liked any work in Marathi, he used to write the authors letters in chaste Marathi in his beautiful handwriting, which was appreciated by many Marathi writers.

More than his happiness, he always thought of the well-being of his family, the happiness of his siblings, and the achievements of his students. A collection of letters written by his past students was presented to him on the occasion of his farewell party given by his department on the day of his superannuation from the University of Michigan. He used to say, “During the eve of my life, whenever I feel sad and depressed due to some difficult situations, I read those letters and that gives me a lot of peace and hope.”

As per his last wish his body was donated to the anatomy department of Michigan University. May his soul rest in peace.

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Written by Sumati Kshirsagar-Kulkarni (Retired) Professor, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India.
[Prof. Kshirsagar-Kulkarni is the younger sister of A.M. Kshirsagar.]