Nils Lid Hjort

Nils Lid Hjort (born 12 January 1953) is a Norwegian statistician, who has been a professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Oslo since 1991. Hjort's research themes are varied, with particularly noteworthy contributions in the fields of Bayesian probability (Beta processes for use in non- and semi-parametric models, particularly within survival analysis and event history analysis, but also with links to Indian buffet processes in machine learning), density estimation and nonparametric regression (local likelihood methodology), model selection (focused information criteria and model averaging), confidence distributions, and change detection. He has also worked with spatial statistics, statistics of remote sensing, pattern recognition, etc. An article on frequentist model averaging, with co-author Gerda Claeskens, was selected as Fast Breaking Paper in the field of mathematics by the Essential Science Indicators in 2005. This and a companion paper, both published in Journal of the American Statistical Association in 2003, introduced focused information criteria, along with a clear large-sample analysis of subset and post-selection estimators. Hjort has been a core member of the Centre of Excellence Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, on the scientific advisory board of the Centre for Innovation Statistics for Innovation, and has also been involved with the Centre for Biostatistical Modelling in the Medical Sciences, all within the University of Oslo. Hjort is an elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1999, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters since 2016, and was the third recipient of the Sverdrup Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Statistical Association in 2013. He was also the first recipient of the Ludwig von Drake Award.