Salem Hanna Khamis

Palestinian statistician and UN official (1919–2005)

Salem Hanna Khamis (سالم حنا خميس) (November 22, 1919 – June 16, 2005) was a Palestinian economic statistician for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization who helped formalise the Geary Khamis method of computing purchasing power parity of currencies.

Son of Hanna and Jamileh a Christian Palestinian family, Salem Khamis was born on November 22, 1919, in Reineh village, Palestine. He finished high school in 1938 with distinction at the Arab College in Jerusalem. He received a British Mandate scholarship for studying at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he received in 1941 a BA degree in Mathematics (major) and Physics (minor), and in 1942 an MA in Physics. From 1942 1943, Salem taught at the Akka High School in Acre and St Lucas High School in Haifa. In 1943 he was appointed a lecturer in the Mathematics Department at AUB. In 1945 he received a British Council scholarship for a PhD at University College London. He defended his thesis during the 1948 Arab Israeli War and Palestinian exodus (Nakba), and received the PhD title in 1950. In 1948 he was refused entrance to the new State of Israel, in whose territory Reineh now lay. Instead, he moved to Aleppo, Syria, where he lectured Applied Mathematics in the Engineering College of Syria University (now University of Damascus), and was appointed head of the Mathematics department.

Khamis contributed scientific research papers in statistics and mathematics. Specifically, he contributed to Sampling theory and the tabulation of the Incomplete gamma function, where he wrote the book “Tables of the Incomplete Gamma Function Ratio”. He contributed in the field of index number theory through a series of papers starting 1972. He developed what became known as, and “indelibly imprinted on all the recent work on international comparisons of prices, real incomes, output and productivity” (Rao, 2005), the Geary Khamis Method of Computing Purchase Power Parity of Currencies and the Geary Khamis dollar used to compare different economies.