Giuseppe Pompilj (17 July 1913, Rome–9 July 1968, Rome) was an Italian

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

Biography

He graduated in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

in 1935 and immediately undertook a university career. In 1942 he was lecturer in

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

(he had studied algebraic geometry under the guidance of

Federigo Enriques Abramo Giulio Umberto Federigo Enriques (5 January 1871 – 14 June 1946) was an Italian mathematician, now known principally as the first to give a classification of algebraic surfaces in birational geometry, and other contributions in algebraic ...

and other Roman mathematicians). After an interruption for military service and a long period of imprisonment, in 1948 Pompilj won the competition for the chair in geometry. He taught geometry and

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...

at the Faculty of Statistical Sciences, University of Rome. Probability theory became the main topic of his interests and he taught this discipline until his premature death. His research interests are attested by seventy publications and ten printed books, ranging across a broad spectrum of topics: algebraic geometry, the

random sampling In statistics, quality assurance, and survey methodology, sampling is the selection of a subset (a statistical sample) of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole population. Statisticians attempt ...

theory, the

probabilistic analysis Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speaking ...

of experiments and especially the theory of

random variables A random variable (also called random quantity, aleatory variable, or stochastic variable) is a mathematical formalization of a quantity or object which depends on random events. It is a mapping or a function from possible outcomes (e.g., the po ...

. This topic is certainly one of the most attractive for Pompilj because he found in it a fruitful field for the application of geometric concepts and because it could represent the unification of fields(not merely formal) of probability and statistics. Among the many initiatives taken to facilitate statistical studies in Italy, a special mention must go to "Courses of Statistical Methods for Researchers", which he organized in Rome in 1958. The lessons taught in these courses by a large number of distinguished professors were collected in several volumes, which still provides one of the most comprehensive presentations in this field.

Publications

* Sulla regressione, Rend. Mat. E sue applicazioni, (1946); * Sulla media di una distribuzione normale, ''

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'', (1947); * Complementi di calcolo delle probabilità, Veschi, Roma (1948); * Metodologia statistica. Integrazione e comparazione dei dati (con C. Gini, 1949); * Sulle medie combinatorie potenziate dei campioni, Rend. Sem. matematico, Padova, (1949); * La teoria affine delle variabili casuali, L’industria, (1956); * Piano degli esperimenti (con G. Dall'Aglio, (1959); * Elaborazione probabilistica dei risultati sperimentali, Atti V Convegno UMI, (1956); * Teoria dei campioni, Veschi, Roma, (1956); * Probability Theory, University of Pittsburgh, (1963–64).

References

Dizionario Biografico Degli Statistici

Enciclopedia Treccani: Brief biography (in Italian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pompilj, Giuseppe 1913 births 1968 deaths 20th-century Italian mathematicians Italian statisticians Scientists from Rome