Paul Embrechts: farewell lecture

Laudatio by Mete Soner, Head of Department:

Good evening everyone,

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you a dear friend, esteemed colleague and a great scientist, Professor Paul Embrechts.

His CV starts with the sentence: “Born 3rd of February 1953 in Schoten. Belgian and Swiss citizen, married to Gerda Janssens, three children”. Indeed, Paul is very proud of his Belgian and Swiss nationalities and of his family. He grew up in Schoten, near Antwerp in a large family of five. He received his education in Antwerp and then in the Catholic University of Leuven, where he also stayed after his doctoral studies. Later he had positions in Imperial College and in Belgium. He was appointed to ETH Zurich in 1989 as successor of Hans Bühlmann who became President of ETH Zurich. So, he stayed in Zurich almost thirty years and contributed to the Department in many different ways: he was Head of Department during the 1994 International Congress of Mathematics.

Paul is very well known for his deep contributions to extreme value theory and quantitative risk management. He himself and his work is very influential in the banking, finance and insurance industries. He sits in the boards of several companies and he is a sought-after speaker in many occasions. The RiskLab that he funded is now a centre for research and education for insurance not only in Switzerland but all over the world.

Paul has received numerous awards and has been a visiting professor at many universities. He also received honorary doctorates from Waterloo, Heriot-Watt, City, the University of London and the Catholic University of Louvain. He is a fellow of of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association.

He is known to be a extremely good speaker so here is Paul with his talk: "Living with Risk".