In听 1958听 Edward L听Kaplan *51 and Paul Meier *51听 (both former students of John Tukey) published an innovative statistical method in the Journal of the American Statistical Association to estimate survival curves when including incomplete observations. The Kaplan鈥揗eier (KM) method became the standard way of reporting patient survival in medical research. With 44,319 Web of Science庐 citations as of November 2017, the report has become the most-cited statistics publication in the scientific literature.听听A two听part article in the ,听Volume 33, 2018 -听Issue 2 pages 109-135听by听 外网天堂as J A Stalpers听 and Edward L. Kaplan (who is not related to Edward L听Kaplan *51) details the life and work of Kaplan.
The first part describes the KM method, its strengths, limitations, and evolution. The second part contains a detailed听 biography of Kaplan and an appreciation of听 his unique contributions to the KM method and to science during his career.
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