Jerzy Neyman
Neyman's influence in modern statistics can scarcely be overestimated. These include
Such commonplace notions today as opinion polls rely on Neyman's ideas. His notion of the randomized experiment led to entirely new methodologies and fields of study in medicine, agriculture, social science and physics.
Neyman was born in that part of Poland under occupation by Imperial Russia. He completed his undergraduate studies at Kharkov University in 1917, but the chaotic political situation in eastern Europe at the time complicated young Neyman's life and academic career. He mairred in 1920 and was almost immediately imprisoned for six weeks.Eventually he went to Warsaw where he received his doctorate for research dealing with probability as applied to agriculture.
Receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship, Neyman travelled to London to work with the leading statistician of the day, Karl Pearson. However Neyman found that Pearson and his colleagues were not as well versed in advanced mathematics as his mentors in Poland (between the World Wars Poland was possibly the premiere nation in the world in terms of mathematical sciences). Neyman extended his fellowship to study with French luminaries such as Lebesgue and Borel, eventually returning to Warsaw.
Eventually Neyman returned to University College in London where, with Fisher and Pearson, he initiated some of the most compelling statistical notions of the twentieth century. While not taking sides in the vitriolic feud between Pearson and Fisher, Neyman did not thrive personally in London and left in 1938 for Berkeley, Claifornia where he spent the rest of his career.
Neyman was proud of his Polish heritage and early in his career publshed as Splawa-Neyman, the prefix indicating royalty. However by his arrival in London he dropped the prefix. His later career included applications to medicine and the new science of meteorology. He received the Medal of Science from President Lyndon Johnson in 1969.
Born: 16 April 1894 in Bendery, Moldavia
Died: 5 Aug 1981 in Oakland, California, USA
The premiere site for biographies of mathematicians on the web is at The University of Saint Andrews in Scotland; this is the primary source of the information in these short biographies. Some biographies used additional web resources as noted in the biography.
The postage stamp images came from a wonderful site on mathematicians on stamps maintained by Jeff Miller, a mathematics teacher in Florida.
The Free Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia is also an excellent source of information and was used as a reference for many bographies.
The opinions expressed in these biographies are those of the author and do not reflect official views of the University of Oklahoma.
