Guttorp, Peter et Gneiting, Tilmann, Studies in the history of probability and statistics XLIX on the matérn correlation family, Biometrika , 93(4), 2006, pp. 989-995
Handcock & Stein (1993) introduced the Matérn family of spatial correlations into statistics as a flexible parametric class with one parameter determining the smoothness of the paths of the underlying spatial field. We document the varied history of this family, which includes contributions by eminent physical scientists and statisticians.