Zygmunt Wilhelm Birnbaum (18 October 1903 – 15 December 2000) was a Polish-American mathematician and statistician who contributed to functional analysis, nonparametric testing and estimation, probability inequalities, survival distributions, competing risks, and reliability theory.
After first earning a law degree and briefly practicing law, Birnbaum obtained his PhD in 1929 at the University of Lwów under the supervision of
Hugo Steinhaus
Hugo Dyonizy Steinhaus ( ; ; January 14, 1887 – February 25, 1972) was a Polish mathematician and educator. Steinhaus obtained his PhD under David Hilbert at Göttingen University in 1911 and later became a professor at the Jan Kazimierz Unive ...
, and was associated with the
Lwów School of Mathematics
The Lwów school of mathematics ( pl, lwowska szkoła matematyczna) was a group of Polish mathematicians who worked in the interwar period in Lwów, Poland (since 1945 Lviv, Ukraine). The mathematicians often met at the famous Scottish Café t ...
. He visited Göttingen, Germany from 1929 to 1931.
After studying insurance mathematics and earning a ''Versicherungsmathematik Diplom'' with
Felix Bernstein in Göttingen, he worked as an actuary in Vienna during 1931–1932, and was then transferred to Lwów where he continued working as an actuary. After obtaining a position as a correspondent
for a Polish newspaper, he arrived in New York as a reporter in 1937. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington in 1939 (with help from
Harold Hotelling
Harold Hotelling (; September 29, 1895 – December 26, 1973) was an American mathematical statistician and an influential economic theorist, known for Hotelling's law, Hotelling's lemma, and Hotelling's rule in economics, as well as Hotelling's T ...
and letters of reference from
Richard Courant
Richard Courant (January 8, 1888 – January 27, 1972) was a German American mathematician. He is best known by the general public for the book '' What is Mathematics?'', co-written with Herbert Robbins. His research focused on the areas of real ...
,
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
, and
Edmund Landau
Edmund Georg Hermann Landau (14 February 1877 – 19 February 1938) was a German mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and complex analysis.
Biography
Edmund Landau was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. His father was Leopold ...
).
Birnbaum was actively involved in reliability work with
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
through the Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories during the late 1950s and 1960s, and was a key member of the "Seattle school of reliability", a group which also included Tom Bray, Gordon Crawford, James Esary,
George Marsaglia
George Marsaglia (March 12, 1924 – February 15, 2011) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is best known for creating the diehard tests, a suite of software for measuring statistical randomness.
Research on random numbers ...
, Al Marshall, Frank Proschan, Ron Pyke, and Sam Saunders.
Birnbaum served as Editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1967–1970) and as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1964). He received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
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 ...
in 1960 (spent at the Sorbonne, Paris), and a
Fulbright Program
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 ...
Fellowship in 1964 (spent at the University of Rome).
Selected publications
Books
* ''Introduction to Probability and Mathematical Statistics'', 1962, Harper and Brothers.
Articles
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References
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External links
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William Birnbaum: MacTutorZygmunt William Birnbaum papers 1920–2000, University of WashingtonZygmunt William Birnbaum photograph collection 1930-1990, University of Washington*
UW Mathematics Dept. Newsletter, Autumn 2001Photo, Z. W. BirnbaumZ. W. Birnbaum, Guggenheim FellowshipSamuel S. Wilks Award
{{DEFAULTSORT:Birnbaum, Zygmunt Wilhelm
1903 births
2000 deaths
University of Lviv alumni
Jewish American scientists
American statisticians
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American Jews
Polish emigrants to the United States