A Conversation with Mary E. Thompson

Abstract

Mary E. Thompson (née Beattie) was born September 9, 1944, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She obtained a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1965, and earned M.Sc. (1966) and Ph.D. (1969) degrees in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the Department of Statistics at the University of Waterloo as a Lecturer in 1969 and became an Assistant Professor in 1971. In 2004, she was awarded the honour of University Professor and in 2011 became Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Waterloo. She has served in many leadership roles including Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, President of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and Chair of the COPSS Presidents’ Award Committee. She chaired the Development Committee for the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) and was its founding Scientific Director. Thompson has received numerous honours and awards including the SSC’s Gold Medal, the Elizabeth L. Scott Award, the Waksberg Award of Survey Methodology and the Governor General’s Innovation Award. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, an Honorary Member of the SSC and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Royal Society of Canada and the Fields Institute. Thompson has made fundamental contributions to several areas in statistics including sampling theory and the analysis of surveys. She is the author of two books in these areas: Theory of Sample Surveys (1997) and Sampling Theory and Practices (2020 with C. Wu). She has also made key contributions in estimation theory and stochastic processes. As the author of over 150 published, refereed papers, Thompson has influenced the theory and practice of statistics. The following conversation took place virtually in September 2022 with interviewer Rhonda J. Rosychuk of the University of Alberta.