In memoriam
On February 25, 2017, Jan M. Hoem passed away peacefully in Stockholm.
Jan Hoem became 77 years old and had a long and influential career in demography behind him. At his death, he was Professor Emeritus of Demometry at Stockholm University and Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock.
Jan Hoem held positions at the University of Oslo, Statistics Norway, and the University of Copenhagen before being recruited as Professor of Demometry at Stockholm University, where he founded the Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) in 1983. He was its director until moving to the MPIDR in 1999. At Rostock, Professor Hoem formed the Laboratory for Fertility and Family Dynamics in Europe that in the following decade trained and supported many of today’s younger European family demographers. In 2009, he returned to SUDA where he has been an active and beloved colleague.
Professor Hoem has made contributions to Markov chain models, stochastic stable population theory, demographic incidence rates, and the statistical analysis of multiplicative models. He is best known for his work on event-history analysis - contributions that have helped shape demographic methodology. He has shown how the careful specification of life course biographies in relation to social and economic change provides stronger evidence for links between public policies, demographic behavior, and demographic outcomes. Jan Hoem was named the
2006 Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
He published his very last article just half a year ago, in Population Studies (2016) on a topic that was very dear to him, that of the dangers of applying so called anticipatory analyses in demographic research.
Gunnar Andersson, Stockholm University
In my professional life, Jan was my father. We met for the first time more than 30 years ago, when I went to Stockholm to learn event history analysis. In addition to giving excellent lectures and helping me with my first little research project in demography, he opened his home to me. I visited the family many times during the months in Stockholm and always felt very welcome. Through all the years that have passed since then, he has been a great source of inspiration and extraordinarily encouraging. I am quite sure that I would never have become established as a demographer if he had not been so incredibly supportive and opened so many doors for me. Therefore, the sadness I feel now is mixed with intense gratitude.
Øystein Kravdal
Professor of demography
University of Oslo, Norway
I am deeply pained to hear the sad news. Although I was aware of the fact that the state of health of Jan was not good, I was hoping to hear that he is better, gained power, and working again on another paper. For me he was the one that helped me to revive professionally. Without him and his encouragements, without his investment in our scientific collaborations, without his support for the Generations and Gender Program to come into live in Romania, I would not have gotten ever so known among the demographers community, nor would Romania have received so much international visibility in the field of population studies. Thank you, dear Jan, for your optimism, trust, patience and support, for your wonderful ideas and exemplary collaboration in the domain of family and fertility studies in Central and Eastern Europe. I have learnt from you what it means to work carefully and how to persevere until a manuscript reaches to be published and worth to be read by many interested people.
Rest in peace distinguished soul!
prof. Cornelia MURESAN
I express condolence on the sad demise of Prof. Hoem. It is great loss to the the community of mathematical Demography. He contributed immensely to the discipline and would be remembered for his analytics.
Prof. Arvind Pandey,
