The Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP) was created at the end of 1942 as a division of the

National Defense Research Committee The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the U ...

(NDRC) within the

Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May ...

(OSRD) in order to solve mathematical problems related to the military effort in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, particularly those of the other NDRC divisions. The panel's headquarters were in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, and it was directed by

Warren Weaver Warren Weaver (July 17, 1894 – November 24, 1978) was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator. He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of machine translation and as an important figure in creating support for scie ...

, formerly of NDRC Division 7,

Fire Control Fire control is the practice of reducing the heat output of a fire, reducing the area over which the fire exists, or suppressing or extinguishing the fire by depriving it of fuel, oxygen, or heat (see fire triangle). Fire prevention and control ...

. It contracted projects out to various research groups, notably at

Princeton Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the Unit ...

and Columbia Universities. In addition to work immediately relevant to the war effort, mathematicians involved with the panel also pursued problems of interest to them without contracts from outside organizations. Most notably,

Abraham Wald Abraham Wald (; ; , ; – ) was a Hungarian and American mathematician and statistician who contributed to decision theory, geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis. One of his well-known statistical works was ...

developed the statistical technique of

sequential analysis In statistics, sequential analysis or sequential hypothesis testing is statistical analysis where the sample size is not fixed in advance. Instead data is evaluated as it is collected, and further sampling is stopped in accordance with a pre-defi ...

while working for AMP. AMP was formally disbanded in 1946.

References

*MacLane, Saunders. "The Applied Mathematics Group at Columbia in World War II" in ''A Century of Mathematics in America'', vol. 3 (ed. Peter Duren). Providence: American Mathematical Society, 1989. *Owens, Larry. "Mathematicians at War: Warren Weaver and the Applied Mathematics Panel, 1942–1945" in ''The History of Modern Mathematics'', vol. 2 (eds. David E. Rowe and John McCleary). Boston: Academic Press, 1989. *Rees, Mina. "The Mathematical Sciences and World War II". ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' (1980), 87, 607–621. *Wallis, W. Allen. "The Statistical Research Group, 1942–1945". ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'' (1980), 75, 320–330. Agencies of the United States government during World War II Mathematics organizations Government agencies established in 1942 1942 establishments in the United States {{Math-org-stub