James O. Ramsay

James O. Ramsay (born 5 September 1942) is a Canadian statistician and Professor Emeritus at McGill University, Montreal, who developed much of the statistical theory behind multidimensional scaling (MDS). Together with co-author Bernard Silverman, he is widely recognized as the founder of functional data analysis. He wrote four influential books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles in statistical and psychometric journals.

Family life

James Ramsay was born in Prince George, British Columbia on 5 September 1942, but didn't reside there long. In his early years, the family spent time in Smithers, British Columbia, Richdale, Alberta, Flaxcombe, Saskatchewan, and Wainwright, Alberta. His father worked as a telegrapher on the Canadian National Railway. During his time at Princeton, he had regular contact with research scientists at Bell Labs, including Joseph Kruskal, John Chambers (creator of the S programming language; core member of the R programming language project), and Douglas Carroll, a leading psychometrician of the era.

Career

Ramsay joined the Department of Psychology at McGill at a high ebb; at that time the department was associated with Donald Hebb (pioneering work in neural networks), Ronald Melzack (pain), Virginia Douglas (hyperactivity), and Dalbir Bindra (comparative and physiological psychology). His colleagues and collaborators over a long career include James V. Zidek (O.C.), Joseph Kruskal, Suzanne Winsberg, Melvin R. Novick, James B. Ramsey, Nancy E. Heckman, and Giles Hooker .

Over the years Ramsay took sabbaticals at University College London, Grenoble, and Toulouse.

His professional influences include Karl Jöreskog, Frederic Lord, Duncan Luce, and Peter J. Huber.

Interests

With his background in English literature, Ramsay has long been an inveterate reader. Ramsay's favourite fiction author is George Eliot. "In my mind she stands head and shoulders above everybody else in the whole field of English literature, the giant among giants." His favourite biography concerns Sir William Osler, born in rural Ontario, Canada in 1849, who went on to become one of the four founding fathers of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and made pioneering contributions to the system of medical residency.

During his youth and adult years, Ramsay was a keen cyclist. At age 16 he completed a 1400 km journey though the Canadian Rockies, much of it on a one-track logging road that subsequently became the Yellowhead Highway. Later on, during his European sabbaticals, he sought out bicycle routes used in the professional tour. Due to his own misjudgement, he was once taken off the Col du Galibier by ambulance in an advanced state of hypothermia.

Publications

Ramsay, J.O., Hooker, G., Campbell, D. & Cao, J. (2007). Parameter estimation for differential equations: A generalized smoothing approach. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 69, 741–796. Ramsay, J.O. & Silverman, B. W. (2005). Functional Data Analysis (2nd Ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. Malfait, N. & Ramsay, J.O. (2003). The historical functional linear model. Canadian Journal of Statistics, 31, 115–128.