A memorial will be held for Mike Titterington at the University of Glasgow on 1 September at 3pm in the University Chapel (Main Building, G12 8QQ, entry from the West Quadrangle or from Professors' Square). The family and the School of Mathematics and Statistics would be delighted to see any of Mike’s friends and colleagues there. Below, our obituary for Mike from 26 April.
Fellows will be sad to learn that Mike Titterington passed away recently at the age of 77.
Mike was born in 1945 and was educated at the High School of Stirling. He gained a 1st class undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh and a Diploma in Mathematical Statistics (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge. He remained in Cambridge to study for a PhD on stochastic nonlinear control and filtering with Peter Whittle.
After completing his PhD, Mike moved to the University of Glasgow, initially as a research assistant and then as a lecturer in the Department of Statistics. He was appointed as a titular professor in 1982 and subsequently to the chair of statistics in 1988.
Mike was especially well known for his breadth of knowledge, including optimal design, discriminant analysis, incomplete data, mixture distributions, smoothing techniques, image analysis, neural networks and machine learning, spatial statistics, image processing, hidden Markov models and Bayesian modelling.
He served as an associate editor for most of the major international statistical journals including joint editor of both J. Royal Statistical Society, Series B (1986-89) and Statistical Science (1992-94). In 1996 he was appointed as Editor of Biometrika, a role he held for 11 years.
Mike had been an RSS fellow since 1972. His volunteer roles with the RSS included honorary secretary, and later chair, of the research section, vice president and member of Council, in addition to many other committee, editorial and conference roles. He also held numerous advisory roles for other institutions, learned bodies and research organisations including EPSRC and its precursor SERC.
He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1991, as a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1986 and as a Member of the International Statistical Institute in 1991. He was awarded the Royal Statistical Society Guy Medal in Silver in 2006 and was appointed as Mahalanobis Lecturer by the Indian Statistical Institute in 2007.
Our sincere condolences go out to Mike's friends and family at this time.
Read the obituary from Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A