Andrew C. Berry

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Andrew Campbell Berry (born November 23, 1906 in Somerville , Massachusetts , United States , † January 13, 1998 in Appleton , Wisconsin ) was an American mathematician . He made an estimate of the speed of convergence in the central limit theorem of probability theory , which he published before Carl-Gustav Esseen in 1941 and is known as the Berry-Esseen theorem.

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Andrew C. Berry was born on November 23, 1906 in Somerville, Massachusetts. He attended high school in Somerville and then studied at Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts. In 1925 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts , in 1926 a Master of Arts and in 1929 a Ph.D. During this time he received several scholarships and in 1925 the Wister Prize for mathematics and music awarded by Harvard University. For 1929/1930 and 1930/1931 he received fellowships from the National Research Council , with which he was able to conduct research on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences at Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island and at the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University in Princeton , New Jersey .

From 1931 he was a member of the faculty at Columbia University in New York City and was there in 1935 Assistant Professor . One of his students at Columbia University was Leonard Gillman (1917-2009), who later became a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin and was also successful as a classical pianist. In 1940 Berry lived with his wife Hope and two daughters in Eastchester , Westchester County , New York .

In 1941 Berry published The accuracy of the Gaussian approximation to the sum of independent variates. In this he gives an estimate of the quality of the convergence in the central limit theorem of probability theory. The Swedish mathematician Carl-Gustav Esseen independently proved an analogous statement in 1942, which he made in 1944 in his dissertation Fourier analysis of distribution functions. A mathematical study of the Laplace-Gaussian law . The result is now known as the Berry-Esseen theorem (or Berry-Esseen inequality).

Berry became an Associate Professor at what was then Lawrence College in Appleton , Wisconsin , in 1941 . During World War II , he took a break from college and served with the 5th Air Fleet of the Pacific Air Forces and later with the 13th Air Fleet. For his use from 1944 after the Battle of Guadalcanal he received the Medal of Freedom in 1946 .

In 1957 he received the first Henry Root Colman Professorship at Lawrence College, which is named after the Lawrence co-founder Henry R. Colman (1800-1895). In addition to teaching and research, he was also a consultant for the Kimberly-Clark company . In 1974 he retired . He was a member of the American Mathematical Society .

Andrew C. Berry died on January 13, 1998 in Appleton, Wisconsin. His wife and two daughters had died before him.

Awards and honors

  • 1946: Medal of Freedom
  • 1957: Henry Root Colman Professorship at Lawrence College

Lawrence University is awarding an Andrew C. Berry-James C. Stewart Prize in Mathematics for graduate researchers, named after Andrew C. Berry and James Clark "Totsy" Stewart, who also taught at Lawrence College. May 1998 died.

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Notes and individual references

  1. ^ The date November 23rd is from the Harvard University digitized yearbook . The year 1900 can be seen there, which is obviously a digitization error. According to other sources, he died on January 13, 1998 at the age of 91, so the year of birth must be 1906. This also corresponds to the information in the 1940 census .
  2. ↑ Berry, Andrew Campbell at snac-dev.iath.virginia.edu
  3. ^ WB Gardner Winner of Ricardo Scholarship on thecrimson.com
  4. ^ Report of the National Research Council. National Research Council, 1927, p. 109 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ^ Report of the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences, 1930, p. 179 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ^ Melvin Henriksen: Leonard Gillman. An interview with some of Leonard Gillman's memories of Andrew C. Berry
  7. ↑ Andrew Berry in the 1940 Census
  8. ^ Berry's Work Earns Award. In: The Lawrentian. September 27, 1946, p. 3.
  9. ^ Faculty Scatters Over Globe To Enjoy Instructive Summers. In: The Lawrentian. September 19, 1958, p. 1.
  10. ↑ Berry To Give Colloquium Talk. In: The Lawrentian. April 15, 1967, p. 6.
  11. ^ Awards and Prizes on the Lawrence University website
  12. ^ Necrology: James C. Stewart In: Lawrence Today. 78, 4, summer 1998, p. 43.
personal data
SURNAME Berry, Andrew C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berry, Andrew Campbell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Somerville , Massachusetts , United States
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1998
Place of death Appleton , Wisconsin , United States