David Blackwell

David Blackwell
Blackwell in 1999
Born
David Harold Blackwell

(1919-04-24)April 24, 1919
DiedJuly 8, 2010(2010-07-08) (aged 91)[3]
EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (BA, MA, PhD)
Known forRao–Blackwell theorem
Blackwell channel
Arbitrarily varying channel
Games of imperfect information
Dirichlet distribution
Blackwell's informativeness theorem
Bayesian statistics
Mathematical economics
Recursive economics
Sequential analysis
AwardsMember of the National Academy of Sciences (1965)
John von Neumann Theory Prize (1979)
R. A. Fisher Lectureship (1986)
Scientific career
FieldsProbability
Statistics
Logic
Game theory
Dynamic programming[1]
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
ThesisSome properties of Markoff chains (1941)
Doctoral advisorJoseph Leo Doob[2]
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.[1] He is one of the eponyms of the Rao–Blackwell theorem.[4] 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,[3][5][6] and the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.[7] 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.[8]

  1. ^ a b David Blackwell publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  2. ^ David Blackwell at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Edit this at Wikidata
  3. ^ a b Sorkin, Michael (July 14, 2010). "David Blackwell fought racism; become world-famous statistician". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  4. ^ Roussas, G.G. et al. (2011) A Tribute to David Blackwell, NAMS 58(7), 912–928.
  5. ^ Cattau, Daniel (July 2009). "David Blackwell 'Superstar'". Illinois Alumni. University of Illinois Alumni Association. pp. 32–34.
  6. ^ "Joseph Thomas Gier; "Wasn't David Blackwell First?"". Joseph Gier Memorial Project. Berkeley EECS. Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  7. ^ Schoemig, Skylar (February 25, 2020). "'A Berkeley hero': UC Berkeley professors, alumnus reflect on legacy of David Blackwell". The Daily Californian. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Anderson2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).