Joseph L. Doob was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, February 27, 1910. He
received the degrees A.B. in 1930, A.M. in 1931 and Ph.D. in 1932 from Harvard
University. From 1932 to 1934 Doob did postdoctoral work at Columbia
University. In 1933-1934 he held a Carnegie Corporation Fellowship. Doob was
a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1935 until his
retirement in 1978. He was Commissar of the Champaign-Urbana Saturday Hike
for about 25 years after World War II.
¶ Doob is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Foreign
Associate of the Academy of Sciences, France. He was President of the Institute
of Mathematical Statistics in 1950 and of the American Mathematical Society in
1963 and 1964. He received the National Medal of Science in 1979. In 1984 Doob
was awarded the Career Prize by the American Mathematical Society for "his
fundamental work in establishing probability as a branch of mathematics and for
his continuing profound influence on its development."