Nathan Keyfitz
Harvard University
June 29, 1913 - April 6, 2010
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Scientific Discipline: Social and Political Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1977)
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Nathan Keyfitz, a Canadian statistician, was a pioneer in the mathematics of demography. As one of the first figures to apply the principles of advanced mathematics to the study of populations, he made innumerable contributions to the field of sociology, including instrumental advances in the accuracy of demographic and sociological studies. Keyfitz's fluency in Indonesian languages resulted in an extensive interest in the demography of Indonesia, an area on which Keyfitz published a number of prominent texts.
Keyfitz graduated from McGill University in 1934 with a degree in mathematics and earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1952. From 1936 to 1959 Keyfitz worked as a statistician, and later senior research statistician, in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in Ottawa. In 1959 Keyfitz became a professor of sociology, eventually working at a number of institutions in the fields of sociology and demography, including the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Toronto; the University of Chicago; and Harvard University. Keyfitz began teaching at Harvard in 1972, became the chairman of the Department of Sociology in 1978, and spearheaded the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard for three years. Keyfitz held membership to a variety of organizations, including the Royal Statistical Society, the Royal Society of Canada, the American Statistical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and a number of others. Keyfitz was elected as president of the Population Association of American in 1970. Even after acquiring emeritus status at Harvard, Keyfitz remained a prominent figure in the field, consulting internationally on matters related to statistics and demography.
