Wald gained his PhD in geometry in 1931 from U Vienna. In 1938, on the Nazi seizure of Austria, he emigrated to the USA and turned his attention to statistical decision theory, making important advances in the theory of sequential sampling. He held posts at Brown U (supervising Chernoff) and Columbia U (where Stein was one of his research students). He was President of the IMS in 1948 and its Rietz Lecturer in 1947. He died in a plane crash in India. The Wald Memorial Lecture is held in his honour - see Appendix XI: Honours and Awards for list of winners

http://isor.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/inst_statistic_decisionsupport/Studies/AbrahamWaldBiografie.pdf Fuller biography and photographs.