  Jim Hannan is a professor who has lived an interesting life and one whose
fundamental research in repeated games was not fully appreciated until late in
his career. During his service as a meteorologist in the Army in World War II,
Jim played poker and made weather forecasts. It is curious that his later
research included strategies for repeated play that apply to selecting the best
forecaster. James Hannan was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts on September 14,
1922. He attended St. Jerome's High School and in January 1943 received the
Ph.B. from St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont. Jim enlisted in the US
Army Air Force to train and serve as a meteorologist. This took him to army
airbases in China by the close of the war. Following discharge from the army,
Jim studied mathematics at Harvard and graduated with the M.S. in June 1947. To
prepare for doctoral work in statistics at the University of North Carolina
that fall, Jim went to the University of Michigan in the summer of 1947. The
routine admissions' physical revealed a spot on the lung and the possibility of
tuberculosis. This caused Jim to stay at Ann Arbor through the fall of 1947 and
then at a Veterans Administration Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts to have
his condition followed more closely. He was discharged from the hospital in the
spring and started his study at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1948. There he began
research in compound decision theory under Herbert Robbins. Feeling the need
for teaching experience, Jim left Chapel Hill after two years and short of
thesis to take a three year appointment as an instructor at Catholic University
in Washington, DC. When told that renewal was not coming, Jim felt pressure to
finish his degree.
