Allan Birnbaum
Statistician, Author
1923 – 1976
Who was Allan Birnbaum?
Allan Birnbaum was an American statistician who contributed to statistical inference, foundations of statistics, statistical genetics, statistical psychology, and history of statistics.
Birnbaum was born in San Francisco. His parents were Russian-born Orthodox Jews. He studied mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, doing a premedical programme at the same time. After taking a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1945, he spent two years doing graduate courses in science, mathematics and philosophy, planning perhaps a career in the philosophy of science. One of his philosophy teachers, Hans Reichenbach, suggested he combine philosophy with science.
He went to Columbia University to do a PhD with Abraham Wald but, when Wald died in a plane crash, Birnbaum asked Erich Leo Lehmann, who was visiting Columbia to take him on. Birnbaum's thesis and his early work was very much in the spirit of Lehmann's classic text Testing Statistical Hypotheses.
Birnbaum stayed at Columbia until 1959 when he moved to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, becoming a full Professor of Statistics in 1963. He travelled a good deal and liked Britain especially. In 1975 he accepted a post at the City University, London, and worked with The Open University on their course M341. He had problems relating to his wife and child, and he killed himself in 1976.
We need you!
Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!
- Born
- May 27, 1923
San Francisco - Profession
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley
- Lived in
- San Francisco
- Died
- Jul 1, 1976
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Allan Birnbaum." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/allan_birnbaum>.
Discuss this Allan Birnbaum biography with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In