Melvin J. Hinich

Melvin Jay "Mel" Hinich (April 29, 1939 – September 6, 2010) ^[1] was a professor of government and economics at the University of Texas at Austin.^[2] Hinich was also a research professor at UT's Applied Research Laboratories.^[2] Known as an expert in political science with a long record of distinction in a number of fields, he wrote seven books and published more than 200 papers in statistics/statistical theory, signal processing, economics, political science, biomedical engineering, pharmacy, and library science.^[2][3]

Hinich was born on April 29, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1966, he married Sonje Gregg and the couple had a daughter, Amy Leksana.

Hinich attended Carnegie Institute of Technology where he earned a B.S. in Mathematics in 1959 as well as an M.S. in Mathematics in 1960.^[2] In 1963, he earned a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University.^[2][3] Hinich's advisor while at Stanford was Herman Chernoff.^[4]

At various times throughout his career, Hinich served as editor for Macroeconomic Dynamics, Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Journal of Mathematical Sociology.^[5] He became a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1973, a fellow of the Public Choice Society in 1988, and was president of that organization from 1992 to 1994.^[5] Hinich was elected as a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2002.^[6]

Michael Munger was reported to have been heavily influenced by Hinich.^[7]

Hinich died on September 6, 2010, after falling down a staircase.^[3] He is survived by his wife and daughter.^[3]

• The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction (with J. Enelow), Cambridge University Press, January (1984)
• Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting, J. Enelow and M. J. Hinich (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1990)
• Political Economy: Institutions, Competition, and Representation, W. Barnett, M. J. Hinich, and N. J. Schofield (eds.), Cambridge University Press (1993).
• Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice, (with M. C. Munger), University of Michigan Press, (1994)
• Analytical Politics (with M.C. Munger) Cambridge University Press, (1997). Empirical Studies in Comparative Politics, (with M.C. Munger) Kluwer Academic Publishers,(1999)
• Topics in Analytical Political Economy, M. J. Hinich and W. Barnett (editors), Elsevier, Oxford (ISBN 978-0-444-53137-7) (2007)
• Consumer Protection Legislation and the U. S. Food Industry (with R. Staelin), Pergamon Press, (1980).
• Introduction to Continuous Probability Theory, (with K. D. MacKenzie), Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., (1969).

• Inbody, Donald S.; Hinich, Melvin J. (January 2009). "Randomly Modulated Periodicities in Relative Sunspot Numbers". Texas State University. hdl:10877/3983.
• Dubnov, Shlomo; Hinich, Melvin J. (January 2009). "Analyzing several musical instrument tones using the randomly modulated periodicity model". Signal Processing. 89 (1): 24–30. doi:10.1016/j.sigpro.2008.07.006.

General

• Biography
• Curriculum vitae

Specific

• Melvin J. Hinich at the Mathematics Genealogy Project