Herbert Robbins Scientist
Herbert Ellis Robbins (January 12, 1915 – February 12, 2001) was one of the most prominent American mathematicians and statisticians of the 20th century. He did research in topology, measure theory, statistics, and a variety of other fields. He was the co-author, with Richard Courant, of What is Mathematics?, a popularization that is still (as of 2012) in print. The Robbins lemma, used in empirical Bayes methods, is named after him. Robbins algebras are named after him because of a conjecture (since proved) that he posed concerning Boolean algebras. The Robbins theorem, in graph theory, is also named after him, as is the Whitney–Robbins synthesis, a tool he introduced to prove this theorem. The well-known unsolved problem of minimizing in sequential selection the expected rank of the selected item under full information, sometimes referred to as the fourth secretary problem, also bears his name: Robbins' problem (of optimal stopping).
Search
Scientist
doctoral advisor | |
---|---|
doctoral student |
Herbert Robbins on Wikipedia
External resources
- http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=7781
- http://isi.cbs.nl/NLet/memoriam01-3.htm
- http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle=euclid.ss/1177013708&view=body&content-type=pdf_1
- http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.jap/1110381374
- http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Robbins.html
- http://www.jstor.org/stable/1990025
- http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/15/national/15ROBB.html