Jerzy Neyman (April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981; born Jerzy Spława-Neyman; ) was a Polish mathematician and statistician who spent the first part of his professional career at various institutions in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

and then at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, and the second part at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. Neyman first introduced the modern concept of a

confidence interval In frequentist statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a range of estimates for an unknown parameter. A confidence interval is computed at a designated ''confidence level''; the 95% confidence level is most common, but other levels, such as 9 ...

into

statistical hypothesis testing A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. ...

and co-revised Ronald Fisher's

null hypothesis In scientific research, the null hypothesis (often denoted ''H''0) is the claim that no difference or relationship exists between two sets of data or variables being analyzed. The null hypothesis is that any experimentally observed difference is ...

testing (in collaboration with

Egon Pearson Egon Sharpe Pearson (11 August 1895 – 12 June 1980) was one of three children of Karl Pearson and Maria, née Sharpe, and, like his father, a leading British statistician. Career He was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College ...

Life and career

He was born into a Polish family in Bendery, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

, the fourth of four children of Czesław Spława-Neyman and Kazimiera Lutosławska. His family was

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

and Neyman served as an altar boy during his early childhood. Later, Neyman would become an agnostic. Neyman's family descended from a long line of Polish nobles and military heroes. He graduated from the Kamieniec Podolski gubernial gymnasium for boys in 1909 under the name ''Yuri Cheslavovich Neyman''. He began studies at Kharkov University in 1912, where he was taught by Ukrainian probabilist

Sergei Natanovich Bernstein Sergei Natanovich Bernstein (russian: Серге́й Ната́нович Бернште́йн, sometimes Romanized as ; 5 March 1880 – 26 October 1968) was a Ukrainian and Russian mathematician of Jewish origin known for contributions to parti ...

. After he read 'Lessons on the integration and the research of the primitive functions' by

Henri Lebesgue Henri Léon Lebesgue (; June 28, 1875 – July 26, 1941) was a French mathematician known for his theory of integration, which was a generalization of the 17th-century concept of integration—summing the area between an axis and the curve of ...

, he was fascinated with measure and integration. In 1921 he returned to

in a program of repatriation of POWs after the Polish-Soviet War. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree at

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

in 1924 for a dissertation titled "On the Applications of the Theory of Probability to Agricultural Experiments". He was examined by

Wacław Sierpiński Wacław Franciszek Sierpiński (; 14 March 1882 – 21 October 1969) was a Polish mathematician. He was known for contributions to set theory (research on the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis), number theory, theory of functions, and to ...

and

Stefan Mazurkiewicz Stefan Mazurkiewicz (25 September 1888 – 19 June 1945) was a Polish mathematician who worked in mathematical analysis, topology, and probability. He was a student of Wacław Sierpiński and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning (''PAU''). ...

, among others. He spent a couple of years in London and Paris on a fellowship to study

statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...

with

Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university st ...

and

Émile Borel Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician and politician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas of measure theory and probability. Biography Borel was ...

. After his return to Poland he established the Biometric Laboratory at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. He published many books dealing with experiments and statistics, and devised the way which the FDA tests medicines today. Neyman proposed and studied randomized experiments in 1923. Furthermore, his paper "On the Two Different Aspects of the Representative Method: The Method of

Stratified Sampling In statistics, stratified sampling is a method of sampling from a population which can be partitioned into subpopulations. In statistical surveys, when subpopulations within an overall population vary, it could be advantageous to sample each ...

and the Method of Purposive Selection", given at the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

on 19 June 1934, was the groundbreaking event leading to modern scientific sampling. He introduced the

in his paper in 1937. Another noted contribution is the

Neyman–Pearson lemma In statistics, the Neyman–Pearson lemma was introduced by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson in a paper in 1933. The Neyman-Pearson lemma is part of the Neyman-Pearson theory of statistical testing, which introduced concepts like errors of the sec ...

, the basis of hypothesis testing. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1928 in Bologna and a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1954 in Amsterdam. In 1938 he moved to Berkeley, where he worked for the rest of his life. Thirty-nine students received their Ph.Ds under his advisorship. In 1966 he was awarded the

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...

of the

and three years later the U.S. National Medal of Science. He died in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

in 1981.

References

Citations

Sources

* Fisher, Ronald "Statistical methods and scientific induction" ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B'' 17 (1955), 69–78. (criticism of statistical theories of Jerzy Neyman and Abraham Wald) * (reply to Fisher 1955) * Reid, Constance, ''Jerzy Neyman—From Life'', Springer Verlag, (1982), .

External links

*
ASA biographical article by Chin Long Chiang
*
Biography of Jerzy Neyman
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Neyman, Jerzy 1894 births 1981 deaths People from Bender, Moldova People from Bendersky Uyezd National Medal of Science laureates Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Econometric Society Polish statisticians American statisticians Survey methodologists National University of Kharkiv alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Mathematical analysts Philosophers of science American philosophers People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent American agnostics Polish agnostics Former Roman Catholics Foreign Members of the Royal Society 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century Polish mathematicians Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century Polish philosophers Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Academics of University College London

Life and career

See also

References

Citations

Sources

External links