Carl was born July 20, 1938, in Orange, California, to John Chetwood Morris and Jane (Neracher) Morris. Carl and his younger sister, Ann, spent their early years in Arizona before the family returned to California, where the siblings grew up on beautiful Point Loma in San Diego. They spent their days playing baseball on sandy beaches and swimming across the channel to explore the San Diego mainland. A younger brother, Steve, joined the family in 1952.
As a young child, Carl earned the nickname “Miser Morris” thanks to his daily habit of counting his coins. His love of sports and counting money, however, were actually the beginnings of his lifelong fascination with numbers and data.
The nickname also belied his innate generosity: Carl was financially generous both with his family and as a longtime contributor to organizations and political action groups that furthered the causes he believed in—protecting the environment, combating climate change, ensuring access to healthcare including abortion access, and supporting the Democratic party.
Carl attended Juan Cabrillo Elementary School in San Diego and the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad for high school. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from CalTech University, and then attended the University of Indiana for two years before going on to earn his Master’s and PhD in Statistics from Stanford University. He taught mathematics at UC Santa Cruz in the mid-1960s before becoming a Senior Statistician at RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, where he met his future wife, Anne (Rainey), in 1968.
Carl and Anne married in Reno in 1970 after winning the jackpot at the slot machines—a whopping $8, which happened to be the cost of a marriage license. That spontaneous beginning launched a marriage that spanned two decades, produced three beloved children and culminated in a friendship that lasted until the end of Carl’s life.
The family moved to Austin, Texas, in 1978, where Carl was a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Texas. In 1990, Carl moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to realize the career of his dreams as Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Medical School. After 50 years of teaching—25 of those spent at Harvard, including a six-year stint as chair of the Harvard Statistics Department—he retired in 2015. He moved back to Austin in 2020 to live with his children and grandchildren.
Carl is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of statistics for his contributions to empirical and hierarchical Bayes methods, exponential families, experimental design and sampling theory, healthcare services, and sports analytics, with a special focus on baseball and tennis. He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He authored numerous statistical books and papers, was a founding advisor of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, and was notably mentioned in Moneyball, deemed by People magazine as “the most influential book on sports ever written” and later adapted into a movie starring Brad Pitt.
Despite his many accomplishments and accolades, Carl was most in his element when teaching his undergraduate and graduate students, both in and outside the classroom. He is remembered by his former students and colleagues as a caring, patient and supportive mentor who possessed singular empathy for his students, and boundless enthusiasm for the field he loved so much. Until the very end of his life, even while in the hospital, Carl continued working with several beloved colleagues on co-writing statistical papers.
He is remembered by his family as a kind and quirky person who endlessly scribbled statistical computations on dinner napkins and proposed probability problems as part of casual conversation. He instilled his deep social conscience in all three of his children and always did his best to support them in becoming who they were. His grandchildren are grateful to have spent lots of time with Granddad in the last few years of his life.
Carl was preceded in death by his parents, his younger brother, Steve, and his grandson, August Morris-Seaholm. He is survived by his three children, John Morris (Yamin Li), Claire Morris Sloan and Catherine Morris; his sister, Ann Stokes; his grandchildren, Armstrong Li Morris, Otto Sloan, and Pearl, Zephyr and Emil Morris Seaholm; his former wife, Anne Morris (Tom Arons); and his cousin, Marcia Gilfillan Diehl.
A memorial event to celebrate Carl’s life is set for Sunday, November 5, 2023, in Austin. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in Carl’s honor to one of his favorite organizations—Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Statistical Association or the Democratic National Committee—or to the progressive cause or charity of your choice.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.wcfishsouth.com for the Morris family.
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