Michael Hasofer

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Michael Hasofer

| image =

| alt =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1927|10|2|df=y}}

| birth_place = Alexandria, Egypt

| death_date = {{death date and age|2010|6|3|1927|10|2|df=y}}

| death_place = Melbourne, Australia

| nationality = Australian

| fields = Mathematics (Statistics)

| workplaces = {{Unbulleted list |University of New South Wales |La Trobe University}}

| alma_mater = {{Unbulleted list |University of Tasmania}}

| footnotes = Hebrew dates: 6 Tishri 5688 - 21 Sivan 5770

}}

Abraham Michael Hasofer (1927–2010) was an Australian statistician. He was a professor and the Chair of Statistics within the Mathematics Department in the University of New South Wales from 1969{{cite web|

url=https://www.maths.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/a_brief_history_-_dept_of_statistics_unsw.pdf

|title=A Brief History of the Department of Statistics, UNSW

|publisher=University of New South Wales}} to 1991. He subsequently held a position at the La Trobe University in Melbourne. He authored a number of publications in the field of applied mathematics and civil engineering, including his formulation of the Hasofer-Lind Reliability Index.{{cite web|url=http://www.jct.ac.il/en/avraham-m-hasofer|title=Avraham M. Hasofer - המרכז האקדמי לב|website=www.jct.ac.il|access-date=8 January 2019|archive-date=8 January 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190108100903/http://www.jct.ac.il/en/avraham-m-hasofer|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.shturem.org/index.php?section=news&id=43351|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100621103401/http://shturem.org/index.php?section=news&id=43351|url-status=dead|archive-date=21 June 2010|title=Prof. R' Avraham Michoel HaSofer, OB"M - Shturem.org Taking The World By Storm|website=www.shturem.org}}

Biography

Abraham Hasofer was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 2 October 1927Elishakoff, Isaac. Safety Factors and Reliability: Friends or Foes? Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. He migrated to Israel after the state's independence but subsequently migrated to Australia in 1955.{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eKUwAQAAIAAJ|title = Hobart Hebrew Congregation: 150 Years of Survival Against All Odds|last1 = Fixel|first1 = Hedi|year = 1994}}{{rp|58}} In the 1960s, Hasofer joined the Chabad Hasidic movement.{{cite web

|url=http://www.shturem.org/index.php?section=artlesson&id=2613

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190108102332/http://www.shturem.org/index.php?section=artlesson&id=2613

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=8 January 2019

|title=Yohrtzeit of R' Avrohom Michoel Hasofer OB"M - Shturem.org Taking The World By Storm

|website=www.shturem.org}}

=Education and career=

In 1948, Hasofer earned a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alexandria in Egypt. In 1960, he earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Tasmania, and in 1964, Hasofer earned his PhD in Mathematical Statistics from the University of Tasmania which was the first PhD degree earned in the university's Department of Mathematics. At the time, Hasofer was a lecturer in the department. Hasofer went on to become Professor of Statistics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).{{cite book

|url=https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22691/1/Voices%2520of%2520a%2520University.pdf

|chapter=Mathematics for 2015

|author = R Lidl and D Elliott

|title=Voices of a University: Celebrating 125 years at the University of Tasmania

|publisher=University of Tasmania}} He was chair of statistics within the Mathematics Department for much of his career. Prior to Hasofer's position at UNSW, he was a resident Fellow of the Australian National University in Canberra from 1955 to 1956. Hasofer and his family remained in Canberra until 1969.{{cite journal|title=The Canberra Jewish Community (1951-1981)|url=https://collections.ajhs.com.au/Detail/objects/52991|journal=Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal|volume=9|issue=3|year=1982|first1=Israel|last1=Porush|access-date=12 April 2022}} Hasofer was a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University. Hasofer received the status of emeritus professor at UNSW.{{cite web|url=https://www.unsw.edu.au/about-us/emeriti/list-emeriti|title=List of former Professors and senior officers - UNSW Sydney|website=www.unsw.edu.au|access-date=10 January 2019|archive-date=10 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160310102514/https://www.unsw.edu.au/about-us/emeriti/list-emeriti|url-status=dead}} Hasofer died in 2010.

= Activities =

Hasofer's work in mathematics included the formulation of the advanced statistical method known as the Hasofer-Lind Reliability Index which is recognized as an important step towards the development of contemporary methods to effectively and accurately estimate structural safety.Dudzik, A., and U. Radoń. "The reliability assessment for steel industrial building." Advances in Mechanics: Theorectical, Computational and Interdisciplinary Issues (2016): 163-166. The Hasofer-Lind Reliability Index is more often called the first-order reliability method (FORM)Huang, Jinsong, and D. V. Griffiths. "Observations on FORM in a simple geomechanics example." Structural Safety 33, no. 1 (2011): 115-119. which Hasofer successfully applied as a method to resolving structural problems.Choi, Chan Kyu, and Hong Hee Yoo. "Uncertainty analysis of nonlinear systems employing the first-order reliability method." Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 26, no. 1 (2012): 39-44. Alternatively, it is referred to as the first order second-moment reliability index.Reis, Maria Teresa Leal Gonsalves Veloso. "Probabilistic assessment of the safety of coastal structures." PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998. Hasofer's research has been used in the field of fMRI research.Worsley, Keith J. [https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.aos/1176324540 "Estimating the number of peaks in a random field using the Hadwiger characteristic of excursion sets, with applications to medical images."] The Annals of Statistics 23, no. 2 (1995): 640-669.

=In the Jewish community=

While living in Canberra, Michael Hasofer and his wife Atara Hasofer were faced with the challenge of the lack of kosher meat in the Australian capital, a challenge that had discouraged other Orthodox families from residing in the city. Hasofer attended a course on the Jewish ritual laws of the slaughter of poultry (shechitat ofot) and made his services available to the community. However, the Jewish community in Canberra took little advantage of the offer. While in Canberra, Hasofer served the Jewish community as a synagogue officiant. He and his wife Atara also served as members of the Education Committee, with Atara establishing a local chapter of the N'shei Chabad, the Habad-Lubavitch Women's Association.

In the Orthodox Jewish community, Hasofer's activities include his serving as the founding president of the Australian chapter of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists (AOJS).Eidelberg, P. "Codes of the Torah: In the defense of seriousness." B'Or Ha'Torah. Volume 9. 1995.BDD, Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu: Journal of Torah and Scholarship. Issues 14-17. 2004. Hasofer supported Dr Lee Spetner's stance on Neo-Darwinism which questioned the plausibility of the evolutionary theory of the appearance of beneficial mutations. Spetner's calculations of the probability of beneficial mutations led him to conclude that is unreasonable to assume that beneficial mutations can be produced even in a generous allocation of geological time.Hasofer, A. M. "A simplified treatment of Spetner's natural selection model." Journal of Theoretical Biology 11, no. 2 (1966): 338-342.Hasofer, A.M. [https://borhatorah.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/a-statistician-looks-at-neo-darwinism.pdf "A Statistician Looks at Neo-Darwinism."] B'Or Ha'Torah Vol. 3. (1983): 13-21. In the 1990s, Hasofer rejected the validity of Bible codes which he viewed as statistically unfounded.Hasofer, A. M. (1993) Codes in the Torah: A Rejoinder. B'Or Ha'Torah, 8E, 121-131.{{Cite web

|url=https://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/opinions/hasofer.html

|author= A. M. Hasofer

|date=1997

|title=Torah Codes: Reality or illusion}}Hasofer, A. Michael. "A statistical critique of the Witztum et al. paper." (1998). While teaching at the Australian National University in Canberra, Hasofer researched notions of probability and random mechanisms discussed in Talmudic literature. According to Hasofer, the attitude of Ancient Israel toward chance mechanism was diametrically opposed to that of neighboring nations. Dice had been used for gambling as well as for divination in Greek and Roman temples, while Jews were forbidden and sanctioned for use of dice. Lots were used by Jews to settle disputes, as a fair method to allocate duties among contenders, among other uses.Hasofer, Abraham M. "Studies in the history of probability and statistics. XVI. Random mechanisms in talmudic literature." Biometrika (1967): 316-321.A. M. Hasofer, “Some aspects of Talmudic probabilistic thought,” Proceedings of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists 2 (1969): 63–80.Sheynin, Oscar. "Stochastic Thinking in the Bible and the Talmud." Annals of Science 55, no. 2 (1998): 185-198.McDonald, James B. "Statistical Distributions: How Deviant Can They Be?." Brigham Young University Studies 28, no. 1 (1988): 83-121. This subject was further researched by Nahum Rabinovitch who explored Talmudic probabilistic notions and chance mechanisms.Rabinovitch, Nachum L. "Studies in the History of Probability and Statistics. XXII: Probability in the Talmud." Biometrika 56, no. 2 (1969): 437-441.

Publications

= Books =

Hasofer, Abraham Michael, Vaughan Rodney Beck, and I. D. Bennetts. Risk Analysis in Building Fire Safety Engineering. Routledge, 2006.

= Selected articles =

Hasofer, A. M. "On the single-server queue with non-homogeneous Poisson input and general service time." Journal of Applied Probability 1, no. 2 (1964): 369–384.
Hasofer, Abraham M. "Studies in the history of probability and statistics. XVI. Random mechanisms in Talmudic literature." Biometrika (1967): 316–321.
Hasofer, A. M. "On the derivative and the upcrossings of the Rayleigh process." Australian Journal of Statistics 12, no. 3 (1970): 150–151.
Hasofer, A. M. "Design for infrequent overloads." Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics 2, no. 4 (1973): 387–388.
Hasofer, Abraham M., and Niels C. Lind. "Exact and invariant second-moment code format." Journal of the Engineering Mechanics division 100, no. 1 (1974): 111–121.
Adler, Robert J., and A. M. Hasofer. "Level crossings for random fields." The Annals of Probability 4, no. 1 (1976): 1–12.
Hasofer, A. M. "Upcrossings of random fields." Advances in Applied Probability 10 (1978): 14–21.
Ditlevsen, O., P. Bjerager, R. Olesen, and A. M. Hasofer. "Directional simulation in Gaussian processes." Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics 3, no. 4 (1988): 207–217.
Hasofer, Abraham M., and Z. Wang. "A test for extreme value domain of attraction." Journal of the American Statistical Association 87, no. 417 (1992): 171–177.
Hasofer, Abraham Michael, and Isabelle Thomas. "Analysis of fatalities and injuries in building fire statistics." Fire Safety Journal 41, no. 1 (2006): 2–14.

Awards

1999 - CERRA Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ICASSP conference{{Cite web|url=http://projects.ce.berkeley.edu/cerra/CERRA_Awards.html|publisher=International Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association|title = CERRA Awards|access-date=12 April 2022}}