Wald

Abraham Wald

Born: 31 Oct 1902 in Cluj, Romania
Died: 13 Dec 1950

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Wald was a student of Karl Menger at Vienna and worked in geometry and statistics. His first work was on metric spaces, an extension of Steinitz' work to infinite dimensional vector spaces, and results on differential geometry.

Wald's most important work was in statistics, in particular sequential analysis and the theory of decision functions, topics which were founded by him, and gathered together in Sequential Analysis (1947). He developed generalizations of the problem of gambler's ruin which play an important role in statistical sequential analysis. Wald developed sequential analysis in response to the demand for more efficient methods of industrial quality control during World War II.

After the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938 Wald fled to the USA. His family were Jewish and all but one of them died in concentration camps. Wald and his wife were later both killed in a plane crash.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. J Wolfowitz, Abraham Wald, 1902-1950, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 23 (1952), 1-13.
  3. K Menger, The formative Years of Abraham Wald and his work in Geometry, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 23 (1952), 14-20. 
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