Alexander Aitken

For the Scottish rugby union player., see Alexander Aitken (rugby union). For the Scottish surveyor, see Alexander Aitkin.

Alexander C. Aitken
FRS FRSE FRSL FRSNZ
Born(1895-04-01)1 April 1895
Dunedin, New Zealand
Died3 November 1967(1967-11-03) (aged 72)
Edinburgh, Scotland
NationalityNew Zealander
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
University of Otago
Known forAitken's array
Aitken's delta-squared process
Aitken interpolation
SpouseWinifred Betts
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society[1]
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Statistics
InstitutionsUniversity of Edinburgh
Thesis Smoothing of Data
Doctoral advisorE. T. Whittaker[2]
Doctoral studentsHans Schneider[2]
Alexander Fairley Buchan[2]
Nora Calderwood[2]
Henry Daniels[2]
Harold Silverstone[2]
Donald Livingstone[2]

Alexander Craig "Alec" Aitken FRS FRSE FRSL FRSNZ (1 April 1895 – 3 November 1967) was one of New Zealand's most eminent mathematicians.[3][4] In a 1935 paper he introduced the concept of generalized least squares, along with now standard vector/matrix notation for the linear regression model.[5] Another influential paper co-authored with his student Harold Silverstone established the lower bound on the variance of an estimator,[6] now known as Cramér–Rao bound.[7] He was elected to the Royal Society of Literature for his World War I memoir, Gallipoli to the Somme.[8]

  1. ^ Whittaker, J. M.; Bartlett, M. S. (1968). "Alexander Craig Aitken 1895-1967". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 14: 1–14. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1968.0001.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Alexander Aitken at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "Alexander Aitken THE HUMAN COMPUTER". NZ Edge. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2005.
  4. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Alexander Aitken", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
  5. ^ Aitken, A. C. (1935). "On Least Squares and Linear Combinations of Observations". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 55: 42–48. doi:10.1017/s0370164600014346.
  6. ^ Aitken, A. C.; Silverstone, H. (1942). "On the Estimation of Statistical Parameters". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 61 (2): 186–194. doi:10.1017/s008045410000618x. S2CID 124029876.
  7. ^ Shenton, L. R. (1970). "The so-called Cramer–Rao inequality". The American Statistician. 24 (2): 36. JSTOR 2681931.
  8. ^ "Review: Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman by Alexander Aitken". Stuff. 21 April 2018. Retrieved 1 May 2019.