Glenn Shafer (born November 21, 1946) is an American mathematician and statistician. He is the co-creator of

Dempster–Shafer theory The theory of belief functions, also referred to as evidence theory or Dempster–Shafer theory (DST), is a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, with understood connections to other frameworks such as probability, possibility and i ...

. He is a University Professor and Board of Governors Professor at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

Early life and education

Shafer grew up on a farm near

Caney, Kansas Caney is a city in Montgomery County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 1,788. History Caney was founded in 1869. It was named from the Caney River. The first post office in Caney was established in ...

. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, then entered the

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. ...

, serving in Afghanistan. He returned to Princeton, earning a PhD in mathematical statistics in 1973 under

Geoffrey Watson Geoffrey Stuart Watson (3 December 1921 – 3 January 1998) was an Australian statistics, statistician. Watson was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1921. He studied at the University of Melbourne, and received his PhD at the North Carolina State U ...

Career

He taught at Princeton and the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...

, joining the faculty of

Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick (also known as the Rutgers Business School, or RBS) is the graduate and undergraduate business school located on the Newark and New Brunswick campuses of Rutgers University. It was founded in ...

in 1992. From 2011 to 2014 he served as dean of the school. During the 1970s and 1980s he expanded a theory first introduced by Arthur P. Dempster to create

, also described as the theory of belief functions or evidence theory. It is a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, allowing one to combine evidence from different sources and arrive at a degree of belief (represented by a mathematical object called ''belief function'') that takes into account all the available evidence. The theory and its extensions have been of particular interest to the

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

community. More recently he worked with

Vladimir Vovk Vladimir Vovk is a British computer scientist, and professor at Royal Holloway University of London. He is the co-inventor of Conformal prediction. He is the co-director of the Centre for Machine Learning at Royal Holloway University of Londo ...

to develop a

game-theoretic Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has applic ...

framework for probability. That work produced a 2001 book, ''Probability and Finance: It's Only a Game!'' A joint research group between Rutgers and

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

has produced more than 50 working papers on the subject.

Principal publications

* Shafer, Glenn, ''A Mathematical Theory of Evidence'', Princeton University Press, 1976. * Shafer, Glenn, and Vovk, Vladimir, ''Probability and Finance: It's Only a Game!'', John Wiley and Sons, 2001.

Recognition

He is designated as a Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers. The University of Prague recognized him with an honorary doctorate. He has been a

Fulbright Fellow The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

and a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

Personal life

He is married to retired Princeton professor and artist

Nell Irvin Painter Nell Irvin Painter (born Nell Elizabeth Irvin; August 2, 1942) is an American historian notable for her works on United States Southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University as the Edwards Professor of Ameri ...

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shafer, Glenn Living people Mathematicians from New Jersey American statisticians Rutgers University faculty Princeton University alumni People from Caney, Kansas 1946 births Mathematical statisticians University of Kansas faculty