Paul Shaman, a Wharton professor who led the Department of Statistics and Data Science during a period of marked growth, died peacefully and surrounded by family on March 19, 2025. He was 85.
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Shaman graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from Columbia University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University before arriving at the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. It was a career decision that turned into a family affair for the Shamans. Paul’s wife of 60 years, Susan Shaman, also a statistician, served in various research roles with the central administration, and their sons, David and Jeffrey, both earned bachelor’s degrees at Penn.
Paul Shaman’s family and colleagues remember him as a kind, generous, and principled man who took genuine interest in the lives of others. At work, he mentored students, befriended co-workers, and was quick to lend a hand. His peers repeatedly nominated him to serve as faculty secretary, and he graciously accepted. At home, he volunteered on his sons’ rowing teams and took David, a world champion of the game Othello, to competitions across the Northeast. He wanted to know every detail about the lives of his four grandchildren, Benjamin, Minal, Ethan, and Dalya. And he happily took in Harley, his beloved “granddog,” for long stretches of pet sitting.
“He had the best integrity of anyone I ever knew,” Susan Shaman said. “He would never, ever do anything that was wrong. He had this moral compass that was properly pointed, and he lived by it. He was a really good human being.”
Jeffrey Shaman, who is a professor of climate and of environmental health sciences at Columbia, said his father was joyful and loved to laugh. He was also considerate and selfless.
“We would hear this over and over again from people, that he would put the needs of others before his own,” he said. “I think that manifested in what he did for the statistics department at Wharton. He wasn’t advancing his own agenda.”
Shaman served as department chair from 1990 to 2002, which was a much longer engagement than typical chairmanships. Interest in statistics was rising at the time, along with advances in data science. Shaman saw an opportunity to expand the department, and he did so through judicious hiring and more class offerings. Under his stable leadership, the department went from “very solid” to “world class,” according to statistics and data science professor emeritus Abba Krieger.
“This was a critical time for our department on many levels,” he said, recalling how Shaman fostered a culture of teamwork. “Paul never seemed to worry, even though there were some courses that we were slated to teach but had nobody to cover them. Miraculously, it all worked out in the end.”
Krieger was just starting his career at Penn after graduating from Harvard University when he met the entire Shaman family, including their pet schnauzer, in a corridor of Steinberg Dietrich Hall. He still remembers that first encounter, which led to a lifelong friendship.
“It was a beautiful picture of an extremely happy family. We were colleagues and friends ever since,” he said, remembering how he used to commute to campus with the family in the early 1980s. “I got to see wonderful parenting up close. David and Jeff are both gifted, and there was nothing that stopped Paul and Susan from making any opportunity available.”
Paul Shaman’s love of numbers was sparked by his affinity for sports; he was a sports broadcaster in high school and college, and was an avid fan of all the Philadelphia teams. Numbers were always on his mind, whether it was sports stats or the econometrics courses he taught to grad students. Jeffrey Shaman said his dad often derailed a conversation with a desire for numerical details, such as how many minutes it took to get there or how many steps did it take to get to the top. He was keenly analytical and always pursuing knowledge.
“One of the things I remember him saying to me as I was going to grad school was that I had to relearn everything I thought I knew,” Jeffrey Shaman said. “He believed that the more you look at something, the more you come to understand it. There are angles and vantages you haven’t seen before.”
Not content to use just his left brain, Paul Shaman was also a talented and creative writer. He served as managing editor of the flagship journal Annals of Statistics, carefully editing each submission to find errors and make fixes. Krieger said he had an eye for detail and an aptitude for highly technical papers that helped him in that role. In his later years, Susan said, Paul’s love of words translated into a passion for crossword puzzles, from the challenging New York Times puzzles to the more cryptic British ones.
“He never went anywhere without a puzzle in his pocket, particularly if he and I were going shopping,” she said with a laugh.
Paul and Susan met in college on a blind date set up by friends. He took her out to dinner, where she ordered oysters not realizing they would be served raw. She was a bit embarrassed by her mistake, but he gallantly offered to switch plates.
“He ate the raw stuff. I thought that was so kind,” she said. “That was it, and we started to date.”
Last June, they celebrated their 60th anniversary with family and friends.
“He was very devoted to my mom,” Jeffrey Shaman said. “They were different people, but they complemented each other very well. That was great to see.”
Krieger said Shaman was a man of “exceptional character” who never raised his voice or lost his temper. He left an indelible mark on the department.
“I will remember Paul for his wisdom, soft and caring personality, selfless devotion, and exemplary integrity,” he said. “Paul was a real mensch.”
