James Orvis Berger (born April 6, 1950, in Minneapolis, Minnesota)[1] is an American statistician best known for his work on Bayesian statistics and decision theory.

He was also director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute from 2002 to 2010, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago since 2011.

[1][2][3] Berger has worked on the decision theoretic bases of Bayesian inference, including advances on the Stein phenomenon[4][5] during and after his thesis.

He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.

[7] In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Purdue University.