Herman Chernoff (born July 1, 1923) is an American applied mathematician, statistician and physicist. He was formerly a professor at University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Stanford, and MIT, currently emeritus at Harvard University. Early life and education Herman Chernoff's parents were Pauline and Max Chernoff, Jewish immigrants from Russia. He studied at Townsend Harris High School and earned a B.S. in mathematics from the City College of New York in 1943. He attended graduate school at Brown University, earning an M.Sc. in applied mathematics in 1945, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1948 under the supervision of Abraham Wald. Recognition Chernoff became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980. In 1987 he was selected for the Wilks Memorial Award by the American Statistical Association, and in 2012 he was made an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society. See also Chernoff bound (also known as Chernoff's inequality) Chernoff face Chernoff's distribution References External links Chernoff's faculty profile at Harvard. Chernoff's faculty profile at MIT. Chernoff's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Chernoff's author profile on MathSciNet. Chernoff's profile on Mathematics Genealogy. Chernoff's author profile on Google Scholar. 1923 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American statisticians 21st-century American physicists Harvard University faculty Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Statistical Association Brown University alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Jewish American scientists Townsend Harris High School alumni Mathematicians from New York (state) 21st-century American Jews Mathematical statisticians