Frank Hampel

Frank Rudolf Hampel (1941 in Heidelberg – October 2, 2018 in Thalwil) was a German statistician and a pioneer in robust statistics. He was professor at ETH Zurich for most of his career.

Education and career
Hampel was born in Heidelberg and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Göttingen and University of Munich, then statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also completed his doctorate in 1968 under the supervision of Erich Lehmann. He was then responsible for the statistical consulting service at the University of Zurich as senior assistant. In 1973 he was elected associate professor of statistics at ETH Zurich by the Swiss Federal Council, and in 1979 he was promoted to full professor. Under his leadership, the Seminar for Statistics continued to grow until his retirement in 2006.

Research
Hampel made fundamental contributions to robust statistics and made a significant contribution to ETH Zurich being a world leader in this field. He introduced the two central terms, breakdown point and influence function with, which quantify the robustness properties of statistical methods and are used to construct optimal inference methods. The creative application of statistics in the analysis of data was also a major concern for Frank Hampel. In the 1970s he was in charge of the evaluation of the so-called large-scale test IV for hail defense in Switzerland and he made it possible to set up the statistical consulting service at ETH Zurich. Hampel was an unconventional researcher and teacher with an extremely original creativity that inspired and shaped many students and colleagues. In his free time, Hampel devoted himself to observing nature with great commitment. He acquired detailed knowledge of astronomy, birds, orchids and dragonflies and knew how to pass this knowledge on with great enthusiasm.