Radu Theodorescu (1933-2007)

 

Professor Radu Theodorescu passed away on August 14, 2007, at the age of 74. A Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics at Université Laval, Québec (Canada), Radu was an Honorary Member of the Societatea de Probabilitati si Statistica din Romania.

 

Radu was born in Bucharest on April 12, 1933. The son of the famous physician Dan Theodorescu and his wife Ortensia Butoianu, Radu studied mathematics at the University of Bucharest (B.Sc., 1954; Ph.D., 1958; D.Sc., 1967). There he met Anca Florescu, whom he married. Their son Dan Jr, born in 1962, is a surgeon and a Professor of Urology at the University of Virginia. Radu divorced in 1982 and a few years later, he met Marie-José Michiels with whom he started a new life. They had two children: Paul, born in 1985, is currently a medical student at the Université de Sherbrooke; Anne, born in 1987, is studying veterinary medicine at the Université de Montréal.

 

After being associated for ten years with the Mathematical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Radu became the first Director of the Industrial Statistics Section of the brand-new Centre for Mathematical Statistics of the Academy in 1964. In 1968, he joined Université Laval, where he pursued a career in teaching and research until his retirement in 1999. The author or co-author of more than 160 scientific papers, Radu also wrote 13 monographs or textbooks, including Random Processes and Learning (1969, with Iosifescu), Concentration Functions (1973, with Hengartner) and Unimodality of Probability Measures (1997, with Bertin and Cuculescu). In addition to supervising or co-supervising many M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in Québec and elsewhere, he served the community in various capacities, notably as Vice-President of the Statistical Science Association of Canada (1972–1973) and Associate Editor for the following journals: Optimization (1970–2000), Les Annales des Sciences Mathématiques du Québec (1976–1999), Statistics and Decisions (1981–2003), Revstat (2002–2007).

 

Co-opted as a member of the International Statistical Institute in 1969, Radu became a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1986 and a fellow of the ASQ in 1989. He was an Honorary Member of the Societatea de Probabilitati si Statistica din Romania and of the SSC (Statistical Society of Canada / Société statistique du Canada) since 2000. He will be sorrowly missed.

 

For further details about Radu and his phenomenal career as a researcher in probability and statistics, the following are available on line:

 

A new Honorary Member for the SSC (2000): Liaison, vol. 14, no 3, pp. 11-12: http://www.theodorescu.ca/Liaison1.pdf

Presentation of a new Professor Emeritus at Laval (2001):

http://www.theodorescu.ca/Tavenas.pdf

A conversation with Radu Theodorescu (2004): Liaison, vol. 18, no 4, pp. 38-48: http://www.theodorescu.ca/Liaison2.pdf

Radu’s academic curriculum vitae: http://www.theodorescu.ca/CV.pdf

Radu’s list of publications: http://www.theodorescu.ca/Publications.pdf

 

 Christian Genest, Ph.D.

Université Laval, President of the SSC