Grace Wahba

Grace Goldsmith Wahba (born August 3, 1934) is an American statistician and retired I. J. Schoenberg-Hilldale Professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a pioneer in methods for smoothing noisy data. Best known for the development of generalized cross-validation and "Wahba's problem", She retired in August 2018 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her life and career are discussed in interviews in 2007, 2018, and 2020.

Honors and awards

Wahba was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000. She is also a fellow of several academic societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Over the years she has received a selection of notable awards in the statistics community:

International Prize in Statistics, 2025 R. A. Fisher Lectureship, COPSS, August 2014 Gottfried E. Noether Senior Researcher Award, Joint Statistics Meetings, August 2009 Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Elizabeth Scott Award, 1996