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“TRIBUTE TO THE LATE LESLIE KISH” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1956-E1957 on Oct. 26, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO THE LATE
LESLIE KISH
______
HON. LYNN N. RIVERS
of michigan
in the house of representatives
Thursday, October 26, 2000
Ms. RIVERS. Mr. Speaker, today I pay tribute to the memory of Leslie Kish.
Leslie Kish, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Michigan and research scientist emeritus of the university's Institute for Social Research, died quietly on October 7, 2000. His death came after a long period of hospitalization, which he faced with characteristic energy and courage. Thus ended a long and productive life, marked by tremendous vitality, commitment to humanitarian values, and a bottom-less curiosity about the world in all its aspects. A few months before his death, Leslie's family, colleagues, former students and many friends had gathered to celebrated his 90th birthday and the creation of a university fund, in his honor, for the training of foreign students in population sampling.
Kish was born in 1910 in Poprad, the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Slovakia. In 1925 the family, parents and four children, migrated to the United States and settled in New York, but in less than a year Leslie's father died, suddenly and unexpectedly. The family decision to remain in the United States meant that the two eldest would have to find work and that their high school and college educations would have to be entirely through night school.
In 1937 Leslie had less than one year of undergraduate college work to complete. Deeply concerned with the threat of a fascist sweep through Europe, however, he interrupted his studies and went to Spain as a volunteer in the International Brigade, to fight for the Spanish Loyalists. He returned to the United States in 1939 and graduated from the night City College of New York with a degree in mathematics (Phi Beta Kappa). He then moved to Washington, where he was first employed at the Bureau of the Census and then as a statistician at the Department of Agriculture. There he joined the group of social scientists who were creating a survey research facility within that department. Again, his career was interrupted by war; from 1942 to 1945 he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a meteorologist. He rejoined his colleagues in the Department of Agriculture in 1945, and in 1947 moved with several of them to the University of Michigan, where together they founded the Institute for Social Research. During his early years at Michigan, Kish combined full-time statistical work with the completion of an M.A. in mathematical statistics (1948) and a Ph.D. in sociology (1952).
Throughout his long career at the university, Kish concentrated on the theory and practice of scientific sampling of populations. His 1965 book, Survey Sampling, a classic still in wide use, is referred to by students and faculty as ``the bible.'' In 1948 he initiated a summer program for training foreign statisticians in population sampling, which has generated a large international body of loyal alumni in more than 100 countries.
Kish's scholarly writing and innovative research in sampling continued undiminished after his formal retirement from the university in 1981. He was in great demand as an expert consultant throughout the world and in response traveled extensively and enthusiastically. Among the many honors and awards that came to him during his long career were designation as the Russel lecturer, the University of Michigan's highest mark of recognition for a faculty member; election to the presidency of the American Statistical Association, election as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Statistical Society of England. To these were added, in his retirement years, election as an Honorary Fellow of the International Statistical Institute and as an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bologna on the occasion profits 900th anniversary.
Dr. Kish is survived by Rhea, his loving wife of 53 years; his daughters, Carla and Andrea Kish; his son-in-Law, Jon Stephens; his granddaughter, Nora Leslie Kish Stephens; and his sister, Magda Bondy. At his request, his body was donated to the University's medical school and there will be no funeral service.
