Ernst Peter Billeter

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Ernst Peter Billeter-Frey (also: Ernesto Pietro Billeter ) (born April 7, 1919 in Basel ; † January 19, 2002 in Villars-sur-Glâne ) was a Swiss mathematician ( Operations Research ) and computer scientist.

Life

His parents were the businessman Ernst Billeter and Maria, geb. Massa. After primary school, Ernst Peter Billeter attended the Humanist Gymnasium, where he improved his French skills for three months at the St. Michael College in Freiburg. At the Matura Institute, he prepared for three semesters for the Federal Matura exam (March 30, 1938 in Bern) and expanded his knowledge of calculus and descriptive geometry .

From October 1938 he studied political economy at the Philosophical-Historical Faculty of the University of Basel . The fact that he came into contact with Corrado Gini during a study visit to Rome in 1942 proved helpful for his doctoral thesis. As a Rockefeller Fellow in the USA he got to know the first generation of computers. In 1949 he was awarded a doctorate degree in Basel with his work "On measuring income concentration: a statistical study with special consideration of the distribution of income in the canton of Basel-Stadt ", with which the determination of the median income became well known. rer. pole. PhD.

He initially worked as an adjunct of the statistical office of the city of Zurich, where in 1954 he proposed the comparative figure Billeter J (Billeter measure) to represent the age structure of a population . After unsuccessfully pressing for the use of the new calculating machines for seven years, he switched to the Bank for International Settlements as a research assistant and then to Sperry-Univac in Zurich as a computer science instructor .

In 1957 he came to the University of Freiburg , where he was appointed associate professor for statistics and computer science the next year and began to set up the Institute pour Automation et recherches opérationelles (Institute for Automation and Business Research, IAUF). Due to a lack of money, the acquisition of the first computer was a long time coming. The use of EDP in economics was ridiculed by colleagues as “upscale plumbing”; On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the IAUF, Billeter was referred to as the “Prophet of IT in Switzerland”. He conducted research in the fields of computer science and cybernetics. When he was promoted to full professor in 1970, he also held a visiting professorship in economic cybernetics at Pennsylvania State University . The IAUF became a founding member of the international association of national IT institutes in 1971, which had its first meeting in mid-June 1973 at Birlinghoven Castle near Bonn. In 1972 the institute was able to replace the previous UNIVAC III with a PDP-11 /20 from Digital Equipment. In 1979 he resigned from the management of the IAUF in order to be able to devote himself more to research and publications. In 1986 he retired.

He was a member of the International Statistical Institute in The Hague and, since 1967, of the Société Fribourgeoise des Sciences Naturelles and co-editor of the journals Metron (International Statistical Journal; with Mario Badaloni) in Rome and Cybernetes in London . His interests were in astronomy, astrophysics and aircraft technology.

With his wife Annelis, geb. Frey († 1993), whom he married on January 25, 1951, he had children Peter, Martin, Gabrielle and Felix.

Publications

  • Corrado Gini and the Tests of the Anglo-Saxon Statistical School ; 1946
  • A measure for assessing the age distribution of a population ; In: Swiss Journal for Economics and Statistics ; Volume 90, 1954, pp. 496-505
  • The practical use of data processing systems: cybernetic and business aspects ; 1968
  • Basics of elementary statistics; Descriptive Procedures ; 1970
  • Basics of representative statistics: sample theory and test planning ; 1970
  • Basics of exploratory statistics: statistical test theory ; 1972
  • with Vladimir Vlach: time series analysis: introduction to practical application ; 1981
  • with Vladimir Vlach: Basics of statistical methodology ; 1982

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vita in Diss. P. 135
  2. ↑ http://www.freiburger-nachrichten.ch/archiv-agglomeration/zwei-pioniere-der-oekonomie . Retrieved March 10, 2016. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6fuHCluty )
  3. ↑ http://prabook.org/web/person-view.html?profileId=483966
  4. ^ Who's who in Europe ; P. 249
personal data
SURNAME Billeter, Ernst Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Billeter-Frey, Ernst Peter; Billeter, Ernesto Pietro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss mathematician and computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 2002
Place of death Villars-sur-Glâne