Agner Krarup Erlang

This article is about the Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer. For other uses, see Erlang.
Agner Krarup Erlang
Born1 January 1878 (1878-01)
Lønborg, Denmark
Died3 February 1929 (1929-02-04) (aged 51)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Resting placeSundby Kirkegård, København, Denmark[1]
Alma materUniversity of Copenhagen
Occupation(s)Mathematician, statistician, and engineer

Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 – 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering[2][3] and queueing theory.[3]

Erlang's 1909 paper, and subsequent papers over the decades, are regarded as containing some of most important concepts and techniques for queueing theory.[4]

By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Erlang had created the field of telephone networks analysis. His early work in scrutinizing the use of local, exchange and trunk telephone line usage in a small community to understand the theoretical requirements of an efficient network led to the creation of the Erlang formula, which became a foundational element of modern telecommunications network studies.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hs2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brockmeyer1948 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Thomopoulos, Nicholas T. (2012). Fundamentals of Queuing Systems: Statistical Methods for Analyzing Queuing Models. New York: Springer. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4614-3713-0.
  4. ^ Bhat, U. Narayan (2015). An Introduction to Queueing Theory: Modeling and Analysis in Applications. Statistics for industry and technology. Boston, MA: Birkhauser. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-8176-8421-1.