Born in Washington, District of Columbia and raised in Freeport on Long Island, Kadane (known as Jay), prepared at Phillips Exeter Academy, earned an Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Harvard College and a Doctor of Philosophy in statistics from Stanford in 1966, under the supervision of Professor Herman Chernoff.
He is one of the early proponents of Bayesian statistics, particularly the subjective Bayesian philosophy. While in graduate school, Jay worked for the Center for Naval Analyses (Continental National American). Upon finishing, he accepted a joint appointment at the Yale statistics department and the Cowles Foundation.
In 1968 he left Yale and served as an analyst at Continental National American for three years.
In 1971, Jay moved to Pittsburgh to join Morris H. DeGroot at Carnegie Mellon University. He became the second tenured professor in the Department of Statistics.
Jay served as department head from 1972-1981 and steered the department to a balance between theoretical and applied work, advocating that statisticians should engage in joint research in substantive areas rather than acting as consultants.
Jay’s contributions span a wide range of fields: econometrics, law, medicine, political science, sociology, computer science (see maximum subarray problem), archaeology, and environmental science, among others He has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications and has served the statistical community in many capacities, including as editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 1983-1985.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
