'The gentlest of gentle souls': Retired FSU professor is remembered by faculty, loved ones

Florida State University's retired professor of statistics Myles Hollander – also an esteemed researcher and a Renaissance man – has died. He was 83.

The Brooklyn, New York native died Monday due to a short illness but is remembered by many who knew him throughout his 42-year career at FSU as well as loved ones who knew him beyond his academic impact. 

"He taught me that love of family crosses home plate first, while everything else sits in the dugout," Bart Hollander – the youngest of Hollander's two sons – told the Tallahassee Democrat about his father, a big baseball fan. 

Hollander received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pennsylvania in 1961 before earning both his master's and doctorate degrees in statistics from Stanford University in California in 1962 and 1965. He married the late Glee Hollander in 1963 while completing his doctoral studies. 

When Hollander moved to Tallahassee in 1965, he joined FSU that same year, where he became a statistics professor and later served as department chairman during two terms for a total of nine years. 

In addition, he was awarded the title of Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor – the highest honor FSU faculty can bestow upon one of their own members – in 1998, and he retired in 2007. 

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Throughout Hollander's career, he made substantial research contributions to areas including nonparametric statistics, reliability theory, survival analysis, biostatistics and probability theory, publishing over 100 papers on the different topics. 

"Myles was a true polymath – one of those Renaissance people who knew a lot about everything," poet and FSU Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English David Kirby said. "History, physics, baseball, ballroom dancing, you name a topic, and Myles would take you up on it." 

At parties, "I'd talk to him for hours about my specialty, which is poetry," he added. "I don't know anything about statistics, so he'd meet me on my ground and hold his own there, always with the utmost grace and humility. Myles was the gentlest of gentle souls." 

Besides teaching, baseball is one of the things Hollander loved. His eldest son Layne Hollander recalled how he often said that as a kid, he would arrive early at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York, to watch his favorite player – Jackie Robinson – and the Brooklyn Dodgers take batting practice before scoring the game by hand. 

But the university he taught at for over 40 years had a special place in Hollander's heart. "My dad loved teaching, research, statistics and everything about FSU and Tallahassee," Layne Hollander said. "He cherished his family and friends deeply." 

During Hollander's time at FSU, he also created the Myles Hollander Distinguished Lectureship, which is an annual lecture event that recognizes an internationally renowned leader and pioneering researcher in statistics. 

Among Hollander's other involvements and accomplishments included serving as theory and methods editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (ASA) from 1993 to 1996 and receiving ASA's Senior Gottfried Noether Award for excellence in nonparametric statistics in 2003. 

FSU Psychology Professor Thomas Joiner – another Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at the university – knew Hollander for over 20 years and described him as the kind of person who never rested on his laurels but still "remained humble all the while." 

"He only grew in my eyes more and more into the epitome of a professor," said Joiner, who is also director of the FSU Psychology Clinic. "He was the kind we all should try to be, regardless of specialty. Even among the select few of Lawton professors, we all looked up to him." 

Details regarding funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

Contact Tarah Jean at  tjean@tallahassee.com  or follow her on X:  @tarahjean_ .

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Retired FSU statistics professor, researcher Myles Hollander dies