Statisticians of the Centuries aims to demonstrate the achievements of statistics to a broad audience, and to commemorate the work of celebrated statisticians. This is done through short biographies that put the statistical work in its historical and sociological context, emphasizing contributions to science and society in the broadest terms rather than narrow technical achievement. The discipline is treated from its earliest times and only individuals born prior to the 20th Century are included. The volume arose through the initiative of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the principal representative association for international statistics (founded in 1885). Extensive consultations within the statistical community, and with prominent members of ISI in particular, led to the names of the 104 individuals who are included in the volume. The biographies were contributed by 73 authors from across the world. The editors are the well-known statisticians Chris Heyde and Eugene Seneta. Chris Heyde is Professor of Statistics at both Columbia University in New York and the Australian National University in Canberra. He is also Director of the Center for Applied Probability at Columbia. He has twice served as Vice President of the ISI, and also as President of the ISI's Bernoulli Society. Eugene Seneta is Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Sydney and a Member of the ISI. His historical writings focus on 19th Century France and the Russian Empire. He has taught courses on the history of probability-based statistics in U.S. universities. Both editors are Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and have, at various times, been awarded the Pitman Medal of the Statistical Society of Australia for their distinguished research contributions.

Our interest in 1. J. Bienayme was kindled by the discovery of his paper of 1845 on simple branching processes as a model for extinction of family names. In this work he announced the key criticality theorem 28 years before it was rediscovered in incomplete form by Galton and Watson (after whom the process was subsequently and erroneously named). Bienayme was not an obscure figure in his time and he achieved a position of some eminence both as a civil servant and as an Academician. However, his is no longer widely known. There has been some recognition of his name work on least squares, and a gradually fading attribution in connection with the (Bienayme-) Chebyshev inequality, but little more. In fact, he made substantial contributions to most of the significant problems of probability and statistics which were of contemporary interest, and interacted with the major figures of the period. We have, over a period of years, collected his traceable scientific work and many interesting features have come to light. The present monograph has resulted from an attempt to describe his work in its historical context. Earlier progress reports have appeared in Heyde and Seneta (1972, to be reprinted in Studies in the History of Probability and Statistics, Volume 2, Griffin, London; 1975; 1976).

Statisticians of the Centuries aims to demonstrate the achievements of statistics to a broad audience, and to commemorate the work of celebrated statisticians. This is done through short biographies that put the statistical work in its historical and sociological context, emphasizing contributions to science and society in the broadest terms rather than narrow technical achievement. The discipline is treated from its earliest times and only individuals born prior to the 20th Century are included. The volume arose through the initiative of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the principal representative association for international statistics (founded in 1885). Extensive consultations within the statistical community, and with prominent members of ISI in particular, led to the names of the 104 individuals who are included in the volume. The biographies were contributed by 73 authors from across the world.The editors are the well-known statisticians Chris Heyde and Eugene Seneta. Chris Heyde is Professor of Statistics at both Columbia University in New York and the Australian National University in Canberra. Eugene Seneta is Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Sydney and a Member of the ISI. His historical writings focus on 19th Century France and the Russian Empire. Both editors are Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and have, at various times, been awarded the Pitman Medal of the Statistical Society of Australia for their distinguished research contributions.

Senior probabilists from around the world with widely differing specialities gave their visions of the state of their specialty, why they think it is important, and how they think it will develop in the new millenium. The volume includes papers given at a symposium at Columbia University in 1995, but papers from others not at the meeting were added to broaden the coverage of areas. All papers were refereed.

The Athens Conference on Applied Probability and Time Series in 1995 brought together researchers from across the world. The published papers appear in two volumes. Volume I includes papers on applied probability in Honor of J.M. Gani. The topics include probability and probabilistic methods in recursive algorithms and stochastic models, Markov and other stochastic models such as Markov chains, branching processes and semi-Markov systems, biomathematical and genetic models, epidemilogical models including S-I-R (Susceptible-Infective-Removal), household and AIDS epidemics, financial models for option pricing and optimization problems, random walks, queues and their waiting times, and spatial models for earthquakes and inference on spatial models.

150 Years of Branching Processes It is now 150 years since statistical work done in Paris on extinction of noble and bourgeois family lines by de Chateauneuf stimulated Bienayme to formulate what is now usually known as the Galton-Watson branching process model and to discover themathe- matical result known as the criticality theorem. However, Bienayme's work lay fallow and the criticality theorem did not emerge again for nearly 30 years, being rediscovered, not quite accurately, by Galton and Watson (1873-74). From that point the subject began a steady development. The original applications to population modelling were soon aug- mented by ones in population genetics and later in the physical sciences. More specifically, the process was used to model numbers of individuals carrying a mutant gene, which could be inherited by some of the individuals offspring, and to epidemics of infectious diseases that may be transmitted to healthy individuals. The nuclear chain reaction in reactors and bombs was modelled, and various special cascade phenomena, in particular cosmic rays. Considerable stimulus to the mathematical development of the subject was provided by the appearance of the influential book, Harris (1963) and this was fueled subsequently by the important books Athreya and Ney (1972) in the USA and Sevastyanov (1971) in the then Soviet Union. More recent. additions to the available list: Jagers (1975), Asmussen and Hering (1983) and Guttorp (1991) have greatly assisted the maintenance ofthe vitality of the subject.