Neyman

Jerzy Neyman

Born: 16 April 1894 in Bendery, Moldavia
Died: 5 Aug 1981 in Oakland, California, USA

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Jerzy Neyman was originally named Splawa-Neyman, but he dropped the first part of his name at the age of 30. He studied at Kharkov University and wrote on Lebesgue integration. Sergi Bernstein influenced him, encouraging him to read Pearson's Grammar of Science .

In Warsaw he lectured in mathematics and statistics and received a doctorate in 1924. Receiving a fellowship to work with Pearson in London, he was disappointed to discover that Pearson was ignorant of modern mathematics.

In Paris he attended lectures by Lebesgue and Hadamard but his interest in statistics was stimulated again by Pearson's son who sought a general principle from which Gosset's tests could be derived. Neyman went on to produce fundamental results on hypothesis testing. He worked in England from 1934 to 1938 when he emigrated to the USA working in Berkeley for the rest of his life. His work on hypothesis testing, confidence intervals and survey sampling revolutionised statistics.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. D G Kendall, M S Bartlett and T L Page, Jerzy Neyman, Bull. London Math. Soc. 16 (1984), 160-179.
  4. C Reid, Neyman - from life (New York, 1982). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996