Salem Hanna Khamis was born in Reineh village near Nazareth in 1919 when Palestine had just become a British mandate. While he was studying for a PhD in Statistics in England , he was declared a refugee when Israel was formed in 1948. He tried to get home to his family but Israel denied him his right to return.He left his home in Reineh village with a British Mandate Palestinian Passport, but became stateless because of the formation of the Israeli state. His life mirrored the experience of many Palestinians of the diaspora â€“ a love of family, a thirst for academic excellence, a drive to encourage others in their pursuits, and a mission to achieve justice for the dispossessed and downtrodden. Salem Khamis died in June 2005 leaving his wife Mary, children Thea, Hanna, Chris and Tareq, and four grandchildren. Family and friends have established a charitable trust in his name, the Dr Salem Hanna Khamis Palestinian Educational Fund which resources an annual bursary for a student at Bierzet University in the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah.
Salem Khamis worked on the world stage, ending his career as Chief of the Statistical Development Service of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.He made a lasting contribution to economic analysis by developing, along with his colleague R C Geary, the Geary-Khamis method for measuring international purchasing power parities (PPPs) which has been used extensively by international agencies such as the World Bank and OECD to make international comparisons of prices, real incomes, output and productivity. His work took him and his family to Lebanon, Egypt, Uganda and Iraq as well as New York and Rome, where FAO has its headquarters. By the time he retired in 1986 he could count the following amongst his many achievements
- Establishing the Maths Department of the American University in Beirut , Lebanon , as Professor and Chairman. 1955 – 1958.
- Regional Statistician for the Near East, FAO Cairo & Rome 1958-1963.
- Responsibility for the FAO’s Freedom from Hunger Campaign 1961.
- Setting up the Institute of Statistics & Applied Economics, Makerere University, Kampala , Uganda 1970-1972.
- Setting up the Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics, Baghdad , Iraq . 1976-1978.
- Responsibility for preparing the World Census of Agriculture. 1980.
- The evaluation and development of the statistical activities of the PLO, for the Arab Fund for Social & Economic Development. 1982.
- Active member of the International Statistical Institute for 50 years and its Vice-President from 1979-81.
- Statistical Consultant for the UN’s Economic Commission for Western Asia, reviewing the retail price statistics and the index of retail prices in Sana’a, Yemen 1984.
- Statistical Adviser for the Arab Fund’s project to finance an agricultural census in the Sudan 1986/87.
- Review of export statistics of agricultural products from the occupied West Bank to Jordan , for the Jordan Government 1986.