:''See

probabilism In theology and philosophy, probabilism (from Latin ''probare'', to test, approve) is an ancient Greek doctrine of Academic skepticism. It holds that in the absence of certainty, plausibility or truth-likeness is the best criterion. The term can a ...

for the followers of such a theory in

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

''. {{ProbabilityTopicsTOC This list contains only probabilists in the sense of

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

s specializing in

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 ...

. :''This list is incomplete; please add to it.'' *

David Aldous David John Aldous FRS (born 13 July 1952) is a mathematician known for his research on probability theory and its applications, in particular in topics such as exchangeability, weak convergence, Markov chain mixing times, the continuum random ...

(born 1952) *

Thomas Bayes Thomas Bayes ( ; 1701 7 April 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem. Bayes never published what would become his ...

(1702–1761) - British mathematician and

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

minister, known for

Bayes' theorem In probability theory and statistics, Bayes' theorem (alternatively Bayes' law or Bayes' rule), named after Thomas Bayes, describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. For examp ...

* Gerard Ben-Arous (born 1957) -

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

Itai Benjamini Itai Benjamini is an Israeli mathematician who holds the Renee and Jay Weiss Chair in the Department of Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Benjamini completed his Ph.D. in 1992 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the supervi ...

Jakob Bernoulli Jacob Bernoulli (also known as James or Jacques; – 16 August 1705) was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus and sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leib ...

(1654–1705) - Switzerland, known for

Bernoulli trials In the theory of probability and statistics, a Bernoulli trial (or binomial trial) is a random experiment with exactly two possible outcomes, "success" and "failure", in which the probability of success is the same every time the experiment is c ...

Joseph Louis François Bertrand Joseph Louis François Bertrand (; 11 March 1822 – 5 April 1900) was a French mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory, differential geometry, probability theory, economics and thermodynamics. Biography Joseph Bertrand was the ...

(1822–1900) *

Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch (or Besikovitch) (russian: link=no, Абра́м Само́йлович Безико́вич; 23 January 1891 – 2 November 1970) was a Russian Empire, Russian mathematician, who worked mainly in England. He was b ...

(1891–1970) *

Patrick Billingsley Patrick Paul Billingsley (May 3, 1925 – April 22, 2011) was an American mathematician and stage and screen actor, noted for his books in advanced probability theory and statistics. He was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and gradua ...

(1925–2011) * Erwin Bolthausen (born 1945) *

Carlo Emilio Bonferroni Carlo Emilio Bonferroni (28 January 1892 – 18 August 1960) was an Italian mathematician who worked on probability theory. Biography Bonferroni studied piano and conducting in Turin Conservatory and at University of Turin under Giuseppe Peano ...

(1892–1960) *

Émile Borel Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Math ...

(1871–1956) *

Kai Lai Chung Kai Lai Chung (traditional Chinese: 鍾開萊; simplified Chinese: 钟开莱; September 19, 1917 – June 2, 2009) was a Chinese-American mathematician known for his significant contributions to modern probability theory. Biography Chung wa ...

(1917–2009) *

Erhan Cinlar Erhan is a Turkish given of raw Turkic origin, with the combination of word “Er” and “Han”, and is a name for males. It has the meanings "Soldier King, or Soldier Khan'. Er means Soldier and Han means Khan. It is a Turkish name. Given name ...

(born 1941) *

Harald Cramér Harald Cramér (; 25 September 1893 – 5 October 1985) was a Swedish mathematician, actuary, and statistician, specializing in mathematical statistics and probabilistic number theory. John Kingman described him as "one of the giants of statist ...

(1893–1985) *

Amir Dembo Amir Dembo (born 25 October 1958, Haifa) is an Israeli-American mathematician, specializing in probability theory. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022. Biography Dembo received his bachelor's degree in electrical en ...

(born 1958) *

Persi Diaconis Persi Warren Diaconis (; born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician. He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University. He is particularly known f ...

(born 1945) *

Joseph Leo Doob Joseph Leo Doob (February 27, 1910 – June 7, 2004) was an American mathematician, specializing in analysis and probability theory. The theory of martingales was developed by Doob. Early life and education Doob was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, ...

(1910–2004) *

Lester Dubins Lester Dubins (April 27, 1920 – February 11, 2010) was an American mathematician noted primarily for his research in probability theory. He was a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley from 1962 through 2004, and in retireme ...

(1920–2010) *

Eugene Dynkin Eugene Borisovich Dynkin (russian: link=no, Евгений Борисович Дынкин; 11 May 1924 – 14 November 2014) was a USSR, Soviet and American mathematician. He made contributions to the fields of probability and algebra, especial ...

(1924–2014) * Robert J. Elliott (born 1940) *

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...

(1913–1996) *

Alison Etheridge Alison Mary Etheridge One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1964) is Professor of Probability and Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford. Etheridge is a fell ...

(born 1964) * Steve Evans (born 1960) *

William Feller William "Vilim" Feller (July 7, 1906 – January 14, 1970), born Vilibald Srećko Feller, was a Croatian-American mathematician specializing in probability theory. Early life and education Feller was born in Zagreb to Ida Oemichen-Perc, a Croa ...

(1906–1970) *

Bruno de Finetti Bruno de Finetti (13 June 1906 – 20 July 1985) was an Italian probabilist statistician and actuary, noted for the "operational subjective" conception of probability. The classic exposition of his distinctive theory is the 1937 "La prévision: ...

(1906–1985) - Italian probabilist and

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 ...

Geoffrey Grimmett Geoffrey Richard Grimmett (born 20 December 1950) is a mathematician known for his work on the mathematics of random systems arising in probability theory and statistical mechanics, especially percolation theory and the contact process. He is ...

(born 1950) *

Alice Guionnet Alice Guionnet (born 24 May 1969) is a French mathematician known for her work in probability theory, in particular on large random matrices. Biography Guionnet entered the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) in 1989. She earned her PhD in 1995 ...

(born 1969) *

Ian Hacking Ian MacDougall Hacking (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been ...

(born 1936) *

Paul Halmos Paul Richard Halmos ( hu, Halmos Pál; March 3, 1916 – October 2, 2006) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and statistician who made fundamental advances in the areas of mathematical logic, probability theory, statistics, operator ...

(1916–2006) *

Joseph Halpern Joseph Yehuda Halpern (born 1953) is an Israeli-American professor of computer science at Cornell University. Most of his research is on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty. Biography Halpern graduated in 1975 from University of Toronto wi ...

(born 1953) * David Heath (c.1943–2011) *

Wassily Hoeffding Wassily Hoeffding (June 12, 1914 – February 28, 1991) was a Finnish statistician and probabilist. Hoeffding was one of the founders of nonparametric statistics, in which Hoeffding contributed the idea and basic results on U-statistics. In prob ...

(1914–1991) *

Kiyoshi Itô Kiyoshi, (きよし or キヨシ), is a Japanese given name, also spelled Kyoshi. Possible meanings *'' Kyōshi'', a form of Japanese poetry *Kyōshi, a Japanese honorific Possible writings *清, "cleanse" *淳, "pure" *潔, "undefiled" *清志, ...

(1915–2008) * Jean Jacod (1944–) *

Edwin Thompson Jaynes Edwin Thompson Jaynes (July 5, 1922 – April 30, 1998) was the Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He wrote extensively on statistical mechanics and on foundations of probability and statistic ...

(1922–1998) *

Mark Kac Mark Kac ( ; Polish: ''Marek Kac''; August 3, 1914 – October 26, 1984) was a Polish American mathematician. His main interest was probability theory. His question, " Can one hear the shape of a drum?" set off research into spectral theory, the i ...

(1914–1984) *

Olav Kallenberg Olav Kallenberg (born 1939) is a probability theorist known for his work on exchangeable stochastic processes and for his graduate-level textbooks and monographs. Kallenberg is a professor of mathematics at Auburn University in Alabama in the US ...

(born 1939) *

Rudolf E. Kálmán Rudolf Emil Kálmán (May 19, 1930 – July 2, 2016) was a Hungarian Americans, Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematician, and inventor. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of the Kalman filter, a mathematical algo ...

(1930–2016) *

Samuel Karlin Samuel Karlin (June 8, 1924 – December 18, 2007) was an American mathematician at Stanford University in the late 20th century. Biography Karlin was born in Janów, Poland and immigrated to Chicago as a child. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish hous ...

(1924–2007) *

David George Kendall David George Kendall FRS (15 January 1918 – 23 October 2007) was an English statistician and mathematician, known for his work on probability, statistical shape analysis, ley lines and queueing theory. He spent most of his academic life ...

(1918–2007) * Richard Kenyon (born 1964) -

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

Harry Kesten Harry Kesten (November 19, 1931 – March 29, 2019) was an American mathematician best known for his work in probability, most notably on random walks on groups and graphs, random matrices, branching processes, and percolation theory. Biograph ...

(1931–2019) *

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

(1883–1946) - best known for his pioneering work in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Aleksandr Khinchin Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (russian: Алекса́ндр Я́ковлевич Хи́нчин, french: Alexandre Khintchine; July 19, 1894 – November 18, 1959) was a Soviet mathematician and one of the most significant contributors to th ...

(1894–1959) *

Andrey Kolmogorov Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov ( rus, Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ kəlmɐˈɡorəf, a=Ru-Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov.ogg, 25 April 1903 – 20 October 1987) was a Sovi ...

(1903–1987) *

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

(1749–1827) * Gregory Lawler (born 1955) *

Lucien Le Cam Lucien Marie Le Cam (November 18, 1924 – April 25, 2000) was a mathematician and statistician. Biography Le Cam was born November 18, 1924 in Croze, France. His parents were farmers, and unable to afford higher education for him; his father die ...

(1924–2000) * Jean-François Le Gall (born 1959) * Paul Lévy (1886–1971) *

Jarl Waldemar Lindeberg Jarl Waldemar Lindeberg (4 August 1876, Helsinki – 24 December 1932, Helsinki) was a Finnish mathematician known for work on the central limit theorem. Life and work Lindeberg was son of a teacher at the Helsinki Polytechnical Institute and at ...

(1876–1932) *

Andrey Markov Andrey Andreyevich Markov, first name also spelled "Andrei", in older works also spelled Markoff) (14 June 1856 – 20 July 1922) was a Russian mathematician best known for his work on stochastic processes. A primary subject of his research lat ...

(1856–1922) *

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''). ...

(1888–1945) *

Henry McKean Henry P. McKean, Jr. (born 1930 in Wenham, Massachusetts) is an American mathematician at the Courant Institute in New York University. He works in various areas of mathematical analysis, analysis. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy, PhD in 1955 ...

(born 1930) *

Paul-André Meyer Paul-André Meyer (21 August 1934 – 30 January 2003) was a French mathematician, who played a major role in the development of the general theory of stochastic processes. He worked at the Institut de Recherche Mathématique (IRMA) in Str ...

(1934–2003) *

Richard von Mises Richard Edler von Mises (; 19 April 1883 – 14 July 1953) was an Austrian scientist and mathematician who worked on solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, statistics and probability theory. He held the position of Gordon ...

(1883–1953) *

Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre FRS (; 26 May 166727 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He moved ...

(1667–1754) *

Octav Onicescu Octav Onicescu (; August 20, 1892 – August 19, 1983) was a Romanian mathematician and a member of the Romanian Academy. Together with his student, Gheorghe Mihoc, he is considered to be the founder of the Romanian school of probability theory ...

(1892–1983) * K. R. Parthasarathy (born 1936) *

Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic Church, Catholic writer. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pa ...

(1623–1662) * Charles E. M. Pearce (1940–2012) *

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief ...

(born 1936) *

Yuval Peres Yuval Peres ( he, יובל פרס; born 5 October 1963) is a mathematician known for his research in probability theory, ergodic theory, mathematical analysis, theoretical computer science, and in particular for topics such as fractals and Hausd ...

(born 1963) * Edwin A. Perkins (born 1953) *

Siméon Denis Poisson Baron Siméon Denis Poisson FRS FRSE (; 21 June 1781 – 25 April 1840) was a French mathematician and physicist who worked on statistics, complex analysis, partial differential equations, the calculus of variations, analytical mechanics, electri ...

(1781–1840) *

Yuri Vasilevich Prokhorov Yuri Vasilyevich Prokhorov (russian: Ю́рий Васи́льевич Про́хоров; 15 December 1929 – 16 July 2013) was a Russian mathematician, active in the field of probability theory. He was a PhD student of Andrey Kolmogorov at th ...

(1929–2013) *

Frank P. Ramsey Frank Plumpton Ramsey (; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British people, British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of L ...

(1903–1930) *

Alfréd Rényi Alfréd Rényi (20 March 1921 – 1 February 1970) was a Hungarian mathematician known for his work in probability theory, though he also made contributions in combinatorics, graph theory, and number theory. Life Rényi was born in Budapest to ...

(1921–1970) *

Oded Schramm Oded Schramm ( he, עודד שרם; December 10, 1961 – September 1, 2008) was an Israeli-American mathematician known for the invention of the Schramm–Loewner evolution (SLE) and for working at the intersection of conformal field theory ...

(1961–2008) * Romano Scozzafava (born 1935) * Scott Sheffield (born 1973) *

Albert Shiryaev Albert Nikolayevich Shiryaev (russian: Альбе́рт Никола́евич Ширя́ев; born October 12, 1934) is a Soviet and Russian mathematician. He is known for his work in probability theory, statistics and financial mathematics. C ...

(born 1934) *

Yakov Sinai Yakov Grigorevich Sinai (russian: link=no, Я́ков Григо́рьевич Сина́й; born September 21, 1935) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on dynamical systems. He contributed to the modern metric theory of dy ...

(born 1935) *

Ray Solomonoff Ray Solomonoff (July 25, 1926 – December 7, 2009) was the inventor of algorithmic probability, his General Theory of Inductive Inference (also known as Universal Inductive Inference),Samuel Rathmanner and Marcus Hutter. A philosophical treatise o ...

(1926–2009) *

Frank Spitzer Frank Ludvig Spitzer (July 24, 1926 – February 1, 1992) was an Austrian-born American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to probability theory, including the theory of random walks, fluctuation theory, percolation theory, the W ...

(1926–1992) * Ruslan L. Stratonovich (1930–1997) *

Daniel W. Stroock Daniel Wyler Stroock (born March 20, 1940) is an United States, American mathematician, a probability theory, probabilist. He is regarded and revered as one of the fundamental contributors to Malliavin calculus with Shigeo Kusuoka and the theory ...

(born 1940) *

Tibor Szele Tibor Szele (Debrecen, 21 June 1918 – Szeged, 5 April 1955) Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics and abstract algebra. After graduating at the Debrecen University, he became a researcher at the Szeged University in 1946, then h ...

(1918–1955) *

Alain-Sol Sznitman Alain-Sol Sznitman (born 13 December 1955) is a French and Swiss mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at ETH Zurich. His research concerns probability theory and mathematical physics.

(born 1955) *

Michel Talagrand Michel Pierre Talagrand (born 15 February 1952) is a French mathematician. Docteur ès sciences since 1977, he has been, since 1985, Directeur de Recherches at CNRS and a member of the Functional Analysis Team of the Institut de Mathématique o ...

(born 1952) *

Heinrich Emil Timerding Heinrich Carl Franz Emil Timerding (23 January 1873 in Strasbourg (On the occasion of his 70th birthday) – 30 April 1945 in Braunschweig) was a German mathematician, professor at the Braunschweig University of Technology, mainly known for h ...

(1873–1945) *

Andrei Toom Andrei Leonovich Toom (in Russian: Андрей Леонович Тоом), also known as André Toom, (1942 Tashkent, Soviet Union - 2022 Queens, New York City) was a Russian mathematician known for the Toom–Cook algorithm and Toom's rule. T ...

(born 1942) *

S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan Sathamangalam Ranga Iyengar Srinivasa Varadhan FRS (born 2 January 1940) is an Indian American mathematician, widely recognised as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. He is known for his fundamental contributions to ...

(born 1940) - 2007

Abel Prize The Abel Prize ( ; no, Abelprisen ) is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Prizes. ...

laureate *

Bálint Virág Bálint Virág (born 1973) is a Hungarian mathematician working in Canada, known for his work in probability theory, particularly determinantal processes, random matrix theory, and random walks and other probabilistic questions on groups. He recei ...

(born 1973) *

Wendelin Werner Wendelin Werner (born 23 September 1968) is a German-born French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematica ...

(born 1968) *

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher i ...

(1894–1964) * David Williams *

Ofer Zeitouni Ofer Zeitouni (עפר זיתוני, born 23 October 1960, Haifa) is an Israeli mathematician, specializing in probability theory. Biography Zeitouni received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1980 from the Technion. He obtaine ...

(born 1960) -

Weizmann Institute The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli univ ...

Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He ...

(1891–1970) - one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers (best known for confirmation probability) *

Harold Jeffreys Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS (22 April 1891 – 18 March 1989) was a British mathematician, statistician, geophysicist, and astronomer. His book, ''Theory of Probability'', which was first published in 1939, played an important role in the revival ...

(1891–1989) - one of the giants within Bayesian statistics school *

Richard Jeffrey Richard Carl Jeffrey (August 5, 1926 – November 9, 2002) was an American philosopher, logician, and probability theorist. He is best known for developing and championing the philosophy of radical probabilism and the associated heuristic of pr ...

(1926–2002) - best known for the philosophy of radical probabilism and Jeffrey conditioning *

Terence Tao Terence Chi-Shen Tao (; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes ...

(born 1975) * Richard M. Dudley (1938–2020) *

William Timothy Gowers Sir William Timothy Gowers, (; born 20 November 1963) is a British mathematician. He is Professeur titulaire of the Combinatorics chair at the Collège de France, and director of research at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Col ...

(born 1963) *

Bálint Tóth Bálint Tόth (born 1955, Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg) is a Hungarian mathematician whose work concerns probability theory, stochastic process and probabilistic aspects of mathematical physics. He obtained PhD in 1988 from the Hungarian Academy ...

(born 1955)

See also