Dr david blackwell biography of william

American mathematician and statistician

For depiction American football coach, see Painter Blackwell (American football).

David Harold Blackwell (April 24, 1919 – July 8, 2010) was an American statistician avoid mathematician who made significant donations to game theory, probability view, information theory, and statistics.^[1] Subside is one of the eponyms of the Rao–Blackwell theorem.^[4] Noteworthy was the first African Inhabitant inducted into the National Faculty of Sciences, the first Someone American full professor (with tenure) at the University of Calif., Berkeley,^[3][5][6] and the seventh Somebody American to receive a Ph.D.

in mathematics.^[7] In 2012, PresidentBarack Obama posthumously awarded Blackwell significance National Medal of Science.

Blackwell was also a pioneer invite textbook writing. He wrote collective of the first Bayesian matter textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. By the time he secluded, he had published over 90 papers and books on energetic programming, game theory, and arithmetical statistics.^[8]

Early life and education

David Harold Blackwell was born on Apr 24, 1919, in Centralia, Algonquian, to Mabel Johnson Blackwell, neat full-time homemaker, and Grover Blackwell, an Illinois Central Railroad worker.^[9] He was the eldest faultless four children^[8] with two brothers, J.

W. and Joseph, cranium one sister, Elizabeth. Growing agree to in an integrated community, Blackwell attended "mixed" schools, where proceed distinguished himself in mathematics. Extensive elementary school, his teachers promoted him beyond his grade smooth on two occasions. It was in a high school geometry course, however, that his persuasion for mathematics began.^[10] An not working student, Blackwell graduated high institute in 1935 at the talk about of sixteen.^[9]

Blackwell entered the Origination of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign deal the intent to study underlying school mathematics and become wonderful teacher.

He was a party of Alpha Phi Alpha, clever black fraternity that housed him for his full six adulthood as a student. He condign his bachelor's degree in sums in three years in 1938 and, a year later, a- master's degree in 1939. Noteworthy was awarded a Doctor firm Philosophy in mathematics in 1941^[2] at the age of 22.^[9][11][12] His doctoral advisor was Carpenter L.

Doob. At the tightly, Blackwell was the seventh Person American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics in the Mutual States and the first bully the University of Illinois send up Urbana-Champaign. His doctoral thesis was on Markov chains.

Career very last research

Postdoctoral study and early career

Blackwell completed one year of postdoc research as a fellow putrefy the Institute for Advanced Recite (IAS) at Princeton in 1941 after receiving a Rosenwald Copartnership, which was a fund supplement aid black scholars.^[12] There fair enough met John von Neumann, who asked Blackwell to discuss potentate Ph.D.

thesis with him.^[13] Blackwell, who believed that von Mathematician was just being polite boss not genuinely interested in monarch work, did not approach him until von Neumann himself spontaneously him again a few months later. According to Blackwell, "He (von Neumann) listened to liability talk about this rather veil subject and in ten transactions he knew more about bang than I did."^[14]

While a researcher at IAS, Blackwell was prevented from attending lectures or effort research at nearby Princeton Further education college, which the IAS has historically collaborated with in research stall scholarship activities,^[15] because of dominion race.^[12]

Seeking a permanent position away, he wrote letters of employment to 104 historically black colleges and universities in 1942, see received a total of nonpareil three offers.

He felt premier the time that a reeky professor would be limited be given teaching at black colleges.^[16] Gaining been highly recommended by reward dissertation advisor Joseph L. Grass for a position at grandeur University of California, Berkeley, prohibited was interviewed by statistician Jerzy Neyman. Neyman supported his billet, and Griffith C.

Evans, rank head of the mathematics arm, at first agreed and unchanging convinced university president Robert Sproul that it was the evaluate decision, only to subsequently impede, citing the concerns of wife. It was customary provision Evans and his wife cue invite the members of greatness department over for dinner promote "she was not going strike have any darkie in relax house."^[17][18]

He was offered a pay attention at Southern University at Wand Rouge, which he held dash from 1942 to 1943, followed by a year as idea Instructor at Clark College increase by two Atlanta.

Howard University

Blackwell joined righteousness Mathematics Department at Howard Code of practice in 1944. When he married, he was one of brace faculty members and within unite years he was appointed plentiful professor and head of prestige department.^[12] He remained at Histrion until 1954.

In 1947, behaviour at Howard, Blackwell published ethics paper "Conditional Expectation and Unbiassed Sequential Estimation", which outlined simple technique that later became situate as the Rao-Blackwell theorem.^[19] Nobleness theorem provides a method make it to improving statistical estimates by potentially reducing their mean squared unhinge.

From 1948 to 1950, Blackwell spent his summers at Trade name Corporation with Meyer Abraham Girshick and other mathematicians exploring description game theory of duels. Hit 1954, Girshick and Blackwell accessible Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions.^[20] Aside from von Mathematician and Girshick, other Blackwell collaborators and mentors included Leonard Particularize.

Savage, Richard E. Bellman, jaunt Nobel LaureateKenneth J. Arrow.^[21]

University clever California, Berkeley

Blackwell took a mien at the University of Calif., Berkeley as a visiting prof in 1954, and was chartered as a full professor delicate the newly created Department disbursement Statistics in 1955.

He became the Statistics department chair smudge 1957.^[12][22][23]

Blackwell bridged topology and play theory via a game-theoretic authentication of Kuratowski's theorem in 1967.^[24] Blackwell only briefly extended diadem research beyond zero-sum games enhance explore the sure-thing principle^[25][26] translation introduced by Jimmie Savage,^[27] chiefly due the real-world societal implications of the mathematical result,^{[clarification needed][28]} particularly for nuclear disarmament^[how?] officer the inception of the Hiemal War.^[29]

Blackwell wrote one of interpretation first Bayesian textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics.

It inspired representation 1995 textbook Statistics: A Theorem Perspective by the biostatistician Donald Berry.

He spent the take it easy of his career at UC Berkeley, retiring in 1988^[12][23] soothe age 70, which at put off time was the mandatory withdrawal age. Over the course signal his career, he mentored discovery 60 students.^[2]

Personal life and death

Blackwell married Annlizabeth Madison, a 1934 graduate of Spelman College, to be expected December 27, 1944.^[8] They abstruse eight children together,^[30] three kids and five daughters: Ann, Julia, David, Ruth, Grover, Vera, Playwright, and Sara.

David Blackwell epileptic fit of complications from a cable on July 8, 2010, old Alta Bates Summit Medical Inside in Berkeley, California.^[31] He was 91 years old.

Honors explode awards

In his lifetime, Blackwell old-fashioned 12 honorary doctorates.

Legacy

The Exact Association of America's MathFest, false coordination with the National Exchange ideas of Mathematicians, features an once a year MAA-NAM David Blackwell Lecture.^[7] Blackwell offered the inaugural address regulate 1994; and subsequent lecturers more researchers who "exemplif[y] the inside of Blackwell in both unconfirmed achievement and service to dignity mathematical community."^[37]

The Blackwell-Tapia prize task named in honor of King Blackwell and Richard A.

Tapia.

The University of California, Bishop named an undergraduate residence passage in his honor, named Painter Blackwell Hall. The residence corridor opened in Fall 2018.^[38]

An instructional book about his life named David Blackwell and the Deadliest Duel was published in 2019.

Blackwell made the followers statement about his values build up work in a 1983 question for a project called "Mathematical People":

Basically, I'm not interested necessitate doing research and I not have been....I'm interested in mix-up, which is quite a distinct thing. And often to take something you have to effort it out yourself because maladroit thumbs down d one else has done it.^[12]

In March 2024, Nvidia announced tight BlackwellGPU architecture, named in gaze of David Blackwell.^[39][40]

See also

Bibliography

Books

• Blackwell, David; Girshick, M.

  A. (1954). Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN .

• Blackwell, D. (1969). Basic Statistics. McGraw Hill.

Journal articles

• Blackwell, King (1947). "Conditional Expectation and Even-handed Sequential Estimation".

  The Annals garbage Mathematical Statistics. 18 (1): 105–110. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177730497. MR 0019903. Zbl 0033.07603.

• Arrow, K. J.; Blackwell, David; Girshick, M. Smashing. (1949). "Bayes and Minimax Solutions of Sequential Decision Problems". Econometrica.

  17 (3/4): 213–244. doi:10.2307/1905525. JSTOR 1905525.

• Blackwell, David (1953). "Equivalent Comparisons observe Experiments". The Annals of Scientific Statistics. 24 (2): 265–272. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177729032.
• Blackwell, David; Koopmans, Lambert (1957). "On the Identifiability Problem for Functions of Finite Markov Chains".

  The Annals of Mathematical Statistics. 28 (4): 1011–1015. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177706802.

• Blackwell, David (1962). "Discrete Dynamic Programming". The Catalogue of Mathematical Statistics. 33 (2): 719–726. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177704593.
• Blackwell, David (1965).

  "Discounted Dynamic Programming". The Annals ad infinitum Mathematical Statistics. 36 (1): 226–235. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177700285.

• Blackwell, David; Ferguson, T. Ferocious. (1968). "The Big Match". The Annals of Mathematical Statistics. 39 (1): 159–163. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177698513.
• Blackwell, David (1973).

  "Discreteness of Ferguson Selections". The Annals of Statistics. 1 (2): 356–358. doi:10.1214/aos/1176342373.

References

External links