Encounters with the Italian Statistical School: A conversation with Carlo Benedetti (Q1365409)

This conversation reveals scientific and biographical characteristics of Carlo Benedetti, who achieved significant results in the theory and practice of index numbers, and of his teacher in statistics, Carlo Emilio Bonferroni (1892-1960), and his director Corrado Gini (1884-1965). There is also information of this kind, resulting from less direct contact, about Nicolae Georgescu-Roegen and the Soviet scholar A. A. Konius. Bonferroni's name is now pervasive in mathematical statistics in connection with the inequalities, but information on the man has been scarce in English [e.g. \textit{E. Seneta}, Hist. Math. 19, No. 1, 24-39 (1992; Zbl 0744.01008)], so much illuminating background is given here. Bonferroni was, initially, trained as a musician. Gini was the doyen of Italian statisticians, known not least for his ``\dots criticism of the superficial anglosaxon formulation \dots'' of statistical inference (i.e. Fisher, Neyman-Pearson). Georgescu-Roegen's powerful mathematics in economic settings is well-known. It is again illuminating to find that ``\dots he had studied with Karl Pearson in London and Emil Borel, E. Goursat, H. Lebesgue, M. Fréchet and G. Darmois in Paris. \dots He considered Karl Pearson his master in philosophy as well as in statistics \dots while Joseph Schumpeter was his master in economics''.