David Blackwell
David Blackwell | |
|---|---|
Blackwell in 1999 | |
| Born | David Harold Blackwell April 24, 1919 |
| Died | July 8, 2010 (aged 91) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Education | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Known for | Rao–Blackwell theorem Blackwell channel Blackwell's contraction mapping theorem Blackwell order Arbitrarily varying channel Bayesian statistics Dirichlet distribution Games of imperfect information Mathematical economics Recursive economics Sequential analysis |
| Awards | John von Neumann Theory Prize (1979) R. A. Fisher Lectureship (1986) National Medal of Science (2012) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Probability Statistics Logic Game theory Dynamic programming |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Thesis | Some properties of Markoff chains (1941) |
| Doctoral advisor | Joseph Leo Doob |
| Doctoral students | |
David Harold Blackwell (April 24, 1919 – July 8, 2010) was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics. He is one of the eponyms of the Rao–Blackwell theorem, and is also known for the Blackwell channel, Blackwell's contraction mapping theorem, Blackwell's approachability theorem, and the Blackwell order. He was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, the first African American full professor with tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, and the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. In 2012, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Blackwell the National Medal of Science.
Blackwell was also a pioneer in textbook writing. He wrote one of the first Bayesian statistics textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. By the time he retired, he had published over 90 papers and books on dynamic programming, game theory, and mathematical statistics.