A conversation with Nils Lid Hjort

Professor (now emeritus) Nils Lid Hjort has through more than four decades been one of the most original and productive statisticians in Norway, contributing to a wide range of topics such as survival analysis, Bayesian nonparametrics, empirical likelihood, density estimation, focused inference, model selection, and confidence distributions. This conversation, which took place at the University of Oslo in December 2023, sheds light on how Nils Hjort's curious and open mind, coupled with a deep understanding, has enabled him to seamlessly navigate between different fields of statistics and its applications. Our aim is to encourage the statistics community to always be on the lookout for unexpected connections in statistical science and to embrace unexpected encounters with fellow statisticians from around the world.