Ester Samuel-Cahn

Ester Samuel-Cahn was born in 1933 in Oslo

Samuel-Cahn was born in Oslo, Norway, where her father, Rabbi Yitzhak Samuel, served as chief rabbi of Norwegian Jewry. In 1942, under the Nazi occupation, he was arrested and later died in Auschwitz. With help from the Norwegian underground, she escaped with her mother and two brothers to Sweden, and in 1946 the family moved to the Land of Israel.

In Israel she trained as a teacher and was certified in 1951, then taught at the Mahane David transit camp in Haifa. In 1953 she began studying mathematics and statistics at the Hebrew University. She went on to Columbia University, where she completed her doctorate in 1961 under Herbert Robbins.

She returned to Israel in 1962 and joined the statistics department of the Hebrew University, becoming a full professor in 1976. Her research covered theoretical statistics and applied probability, especially optimal stopping rules, and with David Assaf she defined the prophet inequality. She headed the Israel Statistical Association from 1993 to 1995.

She retired in 2003 and received the Israel Prize in 2004. She married Aharon Cahn in 1970, and they had three sons and a daughter. She died in 2015 and was buried on the Mount of Olives.