Remembering Agnes Herzberg

Professor Agnes Herzberg, Visiting Professor in the Department of Mathematics, died on 2 June 2026.

Professor Agnes Herzberg was a former member of the Statistics Section at Imperial and the first female president of the Statistical Society of Canada. She was born in 1938 in Saskatoon, the daughter of physicists Gerhard Herzberg (Nobel Laureate in chemistry) and Luise Oettinger, who left Germany for Canada a few years before the Second World War.

She graduated with Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees in mathematics in 1961, 1963, and 1966, the first from Queen's University, and the other two from the University of Saskatchewan. 

She went on to settle in London, working with David Cox, first at Birkbeck and then, from 1968, at Imperial. In 1988 she moved back to Queen's University to a Professorial appointment, becoming an Emeritus Professor in 2004.

Agnes will be remembered with great admiration and affection. Professor Axel Gandy Department of Mathematics

Following the news of her death, Professor Axel Gandy, Head of the Department of Mathematics at Imperial, said: “Professor Agnes Herzberg was a distinguished statistician and a remarkable ambassador for our discipline. Her intellectual contributions, generosity of spirit, and dedication to building academic communities left an enduring mark on Imperial and the international statistical community. 

“Agnes will be remembered with great admiration and affection, and she will be deeply missed by all who had the privilege of knowing and working with her.”

Dr Lynda White, a retired Principal Teaching Fellow in Experimental Design in the Department of Mathematics, said: “I first met Agnes when I arrived at Imperial as a postgraduate student in 1969. She was giving some lectures on Experimental Design, and it struck me that this was a very interesting topic, one which I followed up in the years that followed. A couple of years later I joined the academic staff and we became firm friends. In those days there were only four women on the academic staff, all of us in the Statistics section, so we got to know each other well.

“Agnes was in many ways a very private person, but she was also extremely sociable and had a huge number of friends, not only in London but from across the world. Whenever a new academic visitor or member of staff arrived, she would take them under her wing, show them the sights of London, and arrange various social events to introduce them to the rest of us. She was brilliant at bringing people together and making everyone feel at ease. Her excellent organisational skills were well known as were her annual Sussex conferences which continued well into her retirement, not that Agnes ever really retired. She continued to interact with and enhance the global Statistical community for many years.”

Dr White added: “She will be missed hugely by the many friends and colleagues who crossed her path.”

David J. Hand shared a tribute to Agnes written for the 2025 conference on Statistics, Science, and Public Policy, an annual conference series which Agnes established and organised.

It said: “In 1991 Agnes became the first female president of the Statistical Society of Canada, and she has received many honours. These include being awarded the Statistical Society of Canada’s Distinguished Service Award and its Lise Manchester award and later being made an Honorary Member, being elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. The fellowship of the latter “comprises over 2,000 Canadian scholars, artists, and scientists, peer-elected as the best in their field.” It is entirely fitting that Agnes is a member of this pantheon.”

With thanks to Lynda White and David J. Hand for their contributions.