Franz Thomas Bruss

Life Thomas Bruss studied mathematics at the Universities Saarbrücken, Cambridge and Sheffield. In 1977 he obtained the Dr. rer. nat at Saarbrücken with his thesis (Sufficient Conditions for the Extinction of Modified Branching Processes) under Professor Gerd Schmidt, and the legal Dr. en sciences of Belgium one year later.

Academic career After a scientific career at the Saarland University and University of Namur he moved to the United States and taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Arizona, Tucson, and then at University of California , Los Angeles. In 1990 he returned to Europe as professor of mathematics at Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 1993 he was appointed chair of Mathématiques Générales et Probabilités at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where he has stayed since then. He held visiting positions at the University of Zaire, Kinshasa, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, University of Antwerp, Purdue University, University of Kiel, Université de Namur, and repeatedly at the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Bruss is fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, elected member of the Tönissteiner Kreis e.V., Germany, and member of the International Statistical Institute. In 2004 he received the Jacques Deruyts Prize (period 2000–2004) for distinguished contributions to mathematics from the Belgian Academy of Science Académie Royale de Belgique.

In 2011, Thomas Bruss was honoured Commandeur de Order of Leopold of Belgium.

Under his presidency (2017–2019) the Belgian Statistical Society has received royal favour and become the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium ( – ) F.Thomas Bruss and Zdzisław J. Porosiński, the forest near Trzebnica with Stations of the Cross, Calvary Contributions His main research activities and achievements in mathematics are in the field of probability. He published 64 research papers concerning:

Odds algorithm Secretary problem (1/e-law of best choice) Robbins' problem (of optimal stopping) Galton–Watson processes (bi-sexual) Resource Dependent Branching Processes Bruss–Duerinckx theorem Borel–Cantelli lemma BRS-inequality (Bruss-Robertson-Steele inequality) Longest increasing subsequence Pascal processes Last-arrival problem