James (Jim) Grant Kalbfleisch (14 July 1940 – 23 April 2017) was a Canadian statistician and academic administrator. He was a Fellow of theAmerican Statistical Association and a president of theStatistical Society of Canada.
Kalbfleisch was born inGalt, Ontario, to Claude and Janet Kalbfleisch, both teachers. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1966 from theUniversity of Waterloo; his thesis was entitled "Chromatic Graphs and Ramsey's Theorem" and was supervised byRalph Gordon Stanton. He joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo, where he later held several positions, including the following: Chair of the Department of Statistics [now Statistics and Actuarial Science] (1975–1979); Dean of theFaculty of Mathematics (1986–1989); Associate Provost, Academic Affairs (1990–1993); Vice-President Academic and Provost (1993–2000).
He was an author of about twenty peer-reviewed scholarly papers. He was also the author of the booksProbability and Statistical Inference—Volume 1: Probability andVolume 2: Statistical Inference, published bySpringer-Verlag; the first editions were published in 1979, and the second editions were published in 1985.
In 1975, Kalbfleisch was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Statistical Association. In 1984, he served as president of theStatistical Society of Canada. (His younger brother Jack also served as president, in 1999–2000.) The University of Waterloo has two scholarships for incoming students that are named after him: the James G. Kalbfleisch National Scholarship, awarded by the Faculty of Mathematics, and the Jim Kalbfleisch Scholarship, awarded by the University.
Kalbfleisch was an avid bridge player. He died peacefully at his home inWaterloo, Ontario. He was survived by his wife of 54 years, Rebecca, and their three children.