David Blackwell

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Blackwell, Seattle 1967

David Harold Blackwell (born April 24, 1919 in Centralia , Illinois, † July 8, 2010 in Berkeley ) was an American mathematician who dealt with statistics , game theory and information theory.

life and work

David Harold Blackwell was one of four children of a railroad worker. He studied from 1935 with the aim to become a school teacher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he made his bachelor's degree in 1938 and his master's degree in 1939. In 1941 he received his doctorate there. As a post-doctoral student he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1941/42 . He then taught at Southern University in Baton Rouge , at Clark College in Atlanta and from 1944 at Howard University , where he became professor and head of the mathematics faculty in 1947. In 1954 he was initially at the invitation of Jerzy Neyman (who wanted to bring him to Berkeley in the 1940s, but failed due to racial prejudice) as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley , where he was a professor at the newly established faculty for the following year Statistics was. 1957 to 1961 he was head of the statistics faculty as successor to Neyman. In 1988 he retired from Berkeley.

His interest in statistics came after he attended lectures by Abe Girshick at Howard University, with whom he also worked closely. According to him, and CR Rao is Rao-Blackwell theorem named. He became interested in game theory as a consultant to the Rand Corporation from 1948 to 1950. Independently of Richard Bellman , he developed dynamic programming . He is also known for Blackwell's renewal theorem in renewal theory with applications in engineering.

Blackwell was the first African American to be admitted to the National Academy of Sciences (1965) and also the first full-time African American professor ( tenure ) at Berkeley. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1965), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969), the American Philosophical Society , Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (1976), President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1956) and Vice President of the 1978 American Statistical Association . He was also the vice president of the American Mathematical Society . In 1986 he was RA Fisher Lecturer and in 1979 he received the John von Neumann Theory Prize . He was a participant in a UN conference on education in Africa and gave lectures on behalf of the Mathematical Association of America in 1959/60 at schools in the US southern states, which were mainly attended by blacks, in order to increase interest in mathematics.

He had twelve honorary doctorates (including from Harvard, Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, Michigan State University ) and had 65 doctoral students.

Blackwell was married and had eight children.

Fonts

  • Basic Statistics , McGraw Hill 1969
  • with M. Girshick: Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions , Wiley 1954

literature

  • Donald J. Albers, GL Alexanderson Mathematical People - Profiles and Interviews , Birkhäuser 1985

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Blackwell Renewal Theorem, Springer Online Reference . Blackwell A renewal theorem , Duke Math. Journal, Volume 15, 1948, p. 145.
  2. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter B. (PDF; 1.2 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved March 6, 2018 .
  3. ^ Member History: David Blackwell. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 4, 2018 (English, with short biography).
  4. ↑ List of Honorary Doctorates from Michigan State University
personal data
SURNAME Blackwell, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blackwell, David Harold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Centralia (Illinois)
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 2010
Place of death Berkeley