Brenda MacGibbon

Kathryn Brenda MacGibbon-Taylor (July 31, 1944 – October 7, 2022) was a Canadian mathematician, statistician, and decision scientist. She was a professor of mathematics at the Université du Québec à Montréal^[1] and was affiliated with the Group for Research in Decision Analysis.^[2]

Brenda MacGibbon
Born	(1944-07-31)July 31, 1944
Died	October 7, 2022(2022-10-07) (aged 78) Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Education	McGill University (MSc, PhD)
Spouse	John Taylor
Children	3
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Thesis	K-Analytic Spaces and Countable Operations in Topology (1970)
Doctoral advisor	Donald A. Dawson

Education and career

MacGibbon began her career in pure mathematics, at McGill University. She earned a master's degree there in 1966, working with Michael Herschorn on differential equations,^[3] and completed a Ph.D. in 1970, with a dissertation on topology supervised by Donald A. Dawson.^[4][5]

As well as McGill and the Université du Québec à Montréal, she has also been affiliated with the Department of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems at Concordia University in Montreal, where she was hired in 1986.^[6] By 1993 she had moved to the Université du Québec à Montréal.^[4]

Research

Although MacGibbon's research has covered a wide range of topics in statistics,^[4] including applications of statistics in the study of premenstrual syndrome,^[7] and the use of smart shoes to monitor the rehabilitation of patients with hip fractures,^[8] she was particularly known for her work in theoretical statistics on minimax estimators with constrained parameters.^[4]

Recognition

MacGibbon became the first woman to chair the Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee of the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, in 1993.^[4] She was a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.^[9]

Personal life

MacGibbon was married to John Taylor, with whom she had 3 children. She died from complications of Alzheimer's disease and ALS on October 7, 2022, at the age of 78.^[10]

References

1. "Professeurs retraités" [Retired professors], Faculté des sciences: Site administratif du département de mathématiques (in French), Université du Québec à Montréal, retrieved 2020-08-29
2. , Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD), archived from the original on 2020-09-28, retrieved 2020-08-29
3. MacGibbon, Brenda (1966), Oscillation theorems for ordinary differential equations, Master's thesis, McGill University
4. Thompson, Mary E. (2014), "Reflections on women in statistics in Canada", in Lin, Xihong; Genest, Christian; Banks, David L.; Molenberghs, Geert; Scott, David W.; Wang, Jane-Ling (eds.), Past, Present, and Future of Statistical Science, CRC Press, pp. 203–216, ISBN 9781482204988. See in particular p. 208.
5. Brenda MacGibbon at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
6. (PDF), The Thursday Report, Concordia University, p. 3, 27 November 1986, archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-11-19, retrieved 2020-08-29
7. Solomon, Heather (22 March 1990), (PDF), The Thursday Report, Concordia University, p. 7, archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-11-18, retrieved 2020-08-29
8. Goldsobel, Gady (13 February 2017), ""Smart Soles" Help Patients Recover From A Broken Hip", Healthcanal
9. Honored IMS Fellows, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, retrieved 2020-08-29
10. "Kathryn Brenda MacGibbon(Brenda)". Remembering. Retrieved 2022-10-11.