The Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP) was created at the end of 1942 as a division of the

National Defense Research Committee The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the Un ...

(NDRC) within the

Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1 ...

(OSRD) in order to solve mathematical problems related to the military effort in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, particularly those of the other NDRC divisions. The panel's headquarters were in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, and it was directed by

Warren Weaver Warren Weaver (July 17, 1894 – November 24, 1978) was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator. He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of machine translation and as an important figure in creating support for scien ...

, formerly of NDRC Division 7,

Fire Control Fire control is the practice of reducing the heat output of a fire, reducing the area over which the fire exists, or suppressing or extinguishing the fire by depriving it of fuel, oxygen, or heat (see fire triangle). Fire prevention and control i ...

. It contracted projects out to various research groups, notably at

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

and Columbia Universities. In addition to work immediately relevant to the war effort, mathematicians involved with the panel also pursued problems of interest to them without contracts from outside organizations. Most notably,

Abraham Wald Abraham Wald (; hu, Wald Ábrahám, yi, אברהם וואַלד; – ) was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician who contributed to decision theory, geometry, and econometrics and founded the field of statistical sequential analysis. One ...

developed the statistical technique of

sequential analysis In statistics, sequential analysis or sequential hypothesis testing is statistical analysis where the sample size is not fixed in advance. Instead data are evaluated as they are collected, and further sampling is stopped in accordance with a pre- ...

while working for AMP. AMP was formally disbanded in 1946.

References

*MacLane, Saunders. "The Applied Mathematics Group at Columbia in World War II" in ''A Century of Mathematics in America'', vol. 3 (ed. Peter Duren). Providence: American Mathematical Society, 1989. *Owens, Larry. "Mathematicians at War: Warren Weaver and the Applied Mathematics Panel, 1942–1945" in ''The History of Modern Mathematics'', vol. 2 (eds. David E. Rowe and John McCleary). Boston: Academic Press, 1989. *Rees, Mina. "The Mathematical Sciences and World War II". ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' (1980), 87, 607–621. *Wallis, W. Allen. "The Statistical Research Group, 1942–1945". ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'' (1980), 75, 320–330. Agencies of the United States government during World War II Mathematics organizations Government agencies established in 1942 1942 establishments in the United States {{US-mil-hist-stub