Robert Leon Basmann

Robert Leon Basmann January 15, 1926-April 18, 2024

Robert Basmann, 98 years old, died peacefully in his Vestal home.

Robert was born in Davenport, Iowa of Alonzo Basmann, who worked in the house building industry, and Harriet Townsend Basmann, a soprano singer.  Robert outlived his three siblings.

Upon graduating from high school, Robert joined the United States Army and served in the European theater in the final year of World War II.  At the end of the war, Robert entered West Point, having passed its competitive exam. After a year at West Point, because of damage incurred by frostbite during the winter battles, Robert considered that a career in the military was unwise.  Having been honorably discharged from the army in 1946, he simultaneously followed the BA degree at Iowa State College and received training as a Reserve Officer.  In 1949 he was appointed to the rank of second lieutenant in the Reserve Corps of Engineers. He continued his military training while taking the Masters of Science program at Iowa State.  In 1952 he was started in Strategic Intelligence and the next year became a Reserve commissioned officer at the rank of First Lieutenant for the Fifth Army headquarted in Chicago.  In 1954 Robert surrendered his army commission in order to pursue the doctorate in statistics and econometrics at Iowa State College under Professor Gerhard Tintner, an early econometrician. Robert worked under Tintner at the Iowa Experimental Station, where he developed an extraordinary aptitude for the application of innovative theory to real-world problems.

Ph.D. in hand, Robert in 1955 won a Fulbright Grant to the University of Oslo, Norway. After a year at Northwestern University, Robert for three years became a member of the technical staff  of General Electric at the Hanford nuclear facility in Richland, Washington and, with a top secret security clearance, at Santa Barbara, California.   Robert’s writings during the time made path-breaking and deep contributions to simultaneous equations models, finite sample distribution theory, and identification.  By the early 1960s Robert received credit (along with Thiel) for the derivation of two-stage least squares, an important estimation technique. His early work set standards for the practice of economics and econometrics.

The period saw the construction of  econometric models that today inform the policy analysis of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and international agencies.  Robert, given his precise mathematical work on methods of estimating systems of equations, made critical contributions that led to improvements in the quantitative foundation and empirical testability of the grand model.         

In 1963 Robert took a position at Purdue University, which had a new graduate program in economics. Robert built his first house  in West Lafayette, which helped assuage his earlier desire, opposed by his parents, to become an architect. During his six years at Purdue Robert revealed a new quality.  His impact on his graduate students went far beyond his academic accomplishments.  He was a great teacher, a friend and a mentor who helped prepare students

for careers that they loved. Many expressed their gratitude by being for decades his academic collaborator and close friend.                                                                                                              

In 1969 Robert along with several of his graduate students moved to Texas A&M University. Near College Station, Robert built a second beautiful home, and for vacations, a third in Alto, New Mexico.  At Texas A&M, Robert pioneered research in the area of experimental economics. The research contributed to his pathbreaking work on consumer preference theory and estimation. A practical result of his work on consumer demand theory were proposals in the 1980s for the construction of cost-of-living indexes.                                                                                

After 18 years in Texas, Robert moved to the State University of New York at Binghamton. Shortly after, he met his second wife, Nancy Wulwick.  His interest in geology took the couple on holidays to Acadia National Park.  His photographic landscapes, which he himself developed,

decorate their home.  With his expertise in applied statistics and microeconomics, given the

requests of two former graduate students, Robert pursued with great success the role of litigation consultant.  It was Robert who prepared the winning statistical argument for the trial of Oprah Winfrey against the cattle producers.                                      

Robert left behind his wife and three cats.  He was buried in the Interfaith Cemetery of Temple Israel April 22, 2024

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