He is known for research in likelihood inference and multivariate statistics including the development of skew normal distributions.
[1][2][3] Azzalini was born in Milan and received his laurea in statistics and economics from the University of Padua in 1975.
He carried out his military service for a year before working as a research assistant at the University of Padua.
In 1978, Azzalini moved to the UK and studied at the Imperial College London, where he received his MSc and PhD, both in statistics, in 1979 and 1981, respectively.
[6] In 2011, a workshop was held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile to honor Azzalini's contribution to the development of the skew-normal distribution.