Christopher Charles Heyde, AM, DSc, FAA, FASSA
Born Sydney, 20 April 1939 - Died Canberra, 6 March 2008

Chris Heyde had an exceptionally distinguished career in probability and statistics. He graduated from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours and the University Medal in Mathematical Statistics in 1961; he obtained his MSc in 1962. He was awarded his PhD in Statistics at ANU in 1965. Chris held positions at Michigan State University (USA) and the University of Sheffield (UK) before joining the Department of Statistics at ANU in 1968. He left in 1975 to join the CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics where he rose to be Assistant Chief of the Division and then Acting Chief. From 1983-1986 Chris was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Statistics at the University of Melbourne. In 1986, he returned to ANU to the Chair of Statistics in the Institute of Advanced Studies Department of Statistics. Chris was the Foundation Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences (now the Mathematical Sciences Institute). Since 1993, for the fall semester each year, he was also a Professor at the Columbia University Department of Statistics (USA) and Director of the Columbia University Center for Applied Probability.

Chris served the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Foundation for Science, The Australian Mathematical Society, The Statistical Society of Australia, The International Statistical Institute and the Bernoulli Society by taking on significant roles in these organisations. He also acted as Editor or Associate Editor for a number of journals, including the two APplied Probability journals of which he was Editor-in-Chief from 1990-2007.

Chris published over 200 papers and authored and edited 12 books. His research interests were broad but could perhaps be summed up as being in probability, applied probability (including statistical aspects) and the history of statistics, an area in which he worked closely with Eugene Seneta. His two books on probability and statistics were Martingale Limit Theory and Its Applications (1980) with Peter Hall and Quasi-likelihood and Its Applications (1997).

Chris was a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1973), Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1977), Honorary Life Member of the Statistical Society of Australia Inc. (1981), and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (2003). He became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to Mathematics (2003). He was awarded a DSc honoris causa by the University of Sydney (1998) and received the Pitman Medal (Statistical Society of Australia Inc, 1988), the Hannan Medal (Australian Academy of Science, 1994) and the Lyle Medal (Australian Academy of Science, 1995).

This obituary is based on a longer article by Joe Gani and Eugene Seneta published in the Journal of Applied Probability (2004), 41A, vii - xvii, a Festschrift presented to Chris to celebrate his 65th birthday.