Richard Mansfield Dudley (July 28, 1938 – January 19, 2020) was Professor of Mathematics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
.
Education and career
Dudley was born in
Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his BA at
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
and received his PhD at
Princeton University
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 ...
in 1962 under the supervision of
Edward Nelson
Edward Nelson (May 4, 1932 – September 10, 2014) was an American mathematician. He was professor in the Mathematics Department at Princeton University. He was known for his work on mathematical physics and mathematical logic. In mathematical ...
and
Gilbert Hunt. He was a
Putnam Fellow
The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regar ...
in 1958. He was an instructor and assistant professor at
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 u ...
between 1962 and 1967, before moving to
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
as a professor in mathematics, where he stayed from 1967 until 2015, when he retired.
He died on January 19, 2020, following a long illness.
Research
His work mainly concerned fields of probability, mathematical statistics, and machine learning, with highly influential contributions to the theory of Gaussian processes and empirical processes. He published over a hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals and authored several books. His specialty was
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 ...
and
statistics, especially
empirical process
In probability theory, an empirical process is a stochastic process that describes the proportion of objects in a system in a given state.
For a process in a discrete state space a population continuous time Markov chain or Markov population model ...
es. He is often noted for
his results on the so-called ''Dudley entropy integral''. In 2012 he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2012-11-10.
Books
*
*
*
*
References
* R. S. Wenocur and R. M. Dudley, "Some special Vapnik–Chervonenkis classes," '' Discrete Mathematics'', vol. 33, pp. 313–318, 1981.
External links
Publications
from Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...
.
A Conversation with Dick Dudley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dudley, Richard M.
1938 births
2020 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
American statisticians
Probability theorists
Princeton University alumni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
Putnam Fellows
Harvard College alumni
Annals of Probability editors
Mathematical statisticians