  Leo A. Goodman was born on August 7, 1928 in New York City. He received his
A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in 1948 from Syracuse University, majoring in
mathematics and sociology. He went on to pursue graduate studies in
mathematics, with an emphasis on mathematical statistics, in the Mathematics
Department at Princeton University, and in 1950 he was awarded the M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees. His statistics professors at Princeton were the late Sam Wilks
and John Tukey. Goodman then began his academic career as a statistician, and
also as a statistician bridging sociology and statistics, with an appointment
in 1950 as assistant professor in the Statistics Department and the Sociology
Department at the University of Chicago, where he remained, except for various
leaves, until 1987. He was promoted to associate professor in 1953, and to
professor in 1955. Goodman was at Cambridge University in 1953--1954 and
1959--1960 as visiting professor at Clare College and in the Statistical
Laboratory. And he spent 1960--1961 as a visiting professor of mathematical
statistics and sociology at Columbia University. He was also a research
associate in the University of Chicago Population Research Center from 1967 to
1987. In 1970 he was appointed the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service
Professor at the University of Chicago, a title that he held until 1987. He
spent 1984--1985 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in
Stanford. In 1987 he was appointed the Class of 1938 Professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, in the Sociology Department and the
Statistics Department. Goodman's numerous honors include honorary D.Sc. degrees
from the University of Michigan and Syracuse University, and membership in the
National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
the American Philosophical Society.
