The Hansen Era: Statistical Research and its Implementation at the U.S. Census Bureau, 1940-1970

I feel deeply honored to have been asked to deliver the 1996 Hansen Memorial Lecture, and to thus be thrust into the company of the distinguished group of statisticians who spoke in previous years: Fred Smith, Wayne Fuller, Norbert Schwartz, Leslie Kish, and Ivan Fellegi. I will try to keep to the standards they set, but I hope no one is grading the lectures. It is also, of course, a privilege to contribute to the memory of Morris Hansen and to pay tribute to his seminal role in advancing both theory and practice in survey methods. As many of you know, I was Morris's disciple, colleague, and personal friend, and during this talk I will reflect all three roles. However, in any discussion of history of sampling and related survey methods, Morris's name is bound to occur frequently.