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Edwin Bidwell Wilson (April 25, 1879 – December 28, 1964) was an American
mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
,
statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may w ...
,
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
and general
polymath A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
. He was the sole protégé of
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
physicist
Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...
and was mentor to MIT economist Paul Samuelson. Wilson had a distinguished academic career at Yale and MIT, followed by a long and distinguished period of service as a civilian employee of the US Navy in the Office of Naval Research. In his latter role, he was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the highest honorary award available to a civilian employee of the US Navy. Wilson made broad contributions to mathematics, statistics and aeronautics, and is well-known for producing a number of widely used textbooks. He is perhaps best known for his derivation of the eponymously named
Wilson score interval In statistics, a binomial proportion confidence interval is a confidence interval for the probability of success calculated from the outcome of a series of success–failure experiments (Bernoulli trial, Bernoulli trials). In other words, a binomia ...
, which is a confidence interval used widely in statistics.


Life

Edwin Bidwell Wilson was born in
Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...
to Edwin Horace Wilson (a teacher and superintendent of schools in
Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settlers as a town under its ...
) and Jane Amelia (Bidwell) Wilson. He had two sisters and two brothers; he and his siblings all went on to achieve high levels of education and professional success. Although born in Hartford, Wilson grew up in Middleton, and for a period he attended a private school that had been set up by his father, where he was substantially younger than the other students. Wilson performed at a high level academically from a young age. He recounts that (according to his mother) he taught himself arithmetic at the age of four using his mother's sixty-inch tape measure; he learned multiplication by folding a tape measure into equal-length increments and then counting the number of folded parts. At the age of fifteen, Wilson sat and passed the entrance examination for
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
(his father's ''alma mater''), but his father would not allow him to attend at this age, as he considered him too young; he waited until he was sixteen and then attended
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 ...
, being admitted on the basis of his entrance examination at Yale. Wilson attended
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 ...
as an undergraduate, receiving his AB ''summa cum laude'' in 1899. He then attended
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
for his PhD, graduating in 1901. He also studied mathematics from 1902-1903 in Paris, primarily at the
École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...
, before returning to teach at Yale. At Yale, Wilson worked under the supervision of
Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...
and compiled an important textbook on vector analysis from Gibbs' lecture notes. Gibbs died when Wilson had just turned twenty-four, but he exerted a strong influence on Wilson through his early supervision and through Wilson's experience compiling Gibbs' notes. Wilson became an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Yale in 1906, then Associate Professor of Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1907, then Professor of Mathematics in 1911, then Head of the Department of Physics in 1917, and then Professor of Vital Statistics at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1922. During
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, Wilson gave a course in aeronautical engineering to US Army and Navy officers at MIT. Wilson retired from academic work in 1945 and worked as a consultant at the Office of Naval Research until his death in 1964. For his service to the US Navy during and after the war, Wilson was awarded the Superior Civilian Service Award in 1960 and the Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1964. The latter award is the highest honorary award available for a civilian employee of the US Navy. Wilson was also awarded an honorary
LLD Legum Doctor (Latin: “teacher of the laws”) (LL.D.) or, in English, Doctor of Laws, is a doctorate-level academic degree in law or an honorary degree, depending on the jurisdiction. The double “L” in the abbreviation refers to the early ...
degree form
Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...
in 1955. Wilson had a broad range of interests and skills, and he served in a number of distinguished roles in national academies for the arts and sciences. He was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
and served as its Vice-President from 1949-1953; he was a Fellow of the
Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...
and the American Statistical Association, serving as President of the latter in 1929; he was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, serving as President from 1927-1931; and he was a member of the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. Wilson won the John Frederick Lewis Award from the American Philosophical Society in 1963. Wilson married Ethel Sentner on 5 July 1911 and they had two daughters, Doris and Enid. Doris Wilson graduated from
McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univer ...
in 1946 and became an analytical chemist working at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health. Enid Wilson graduated from
Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
and Simmons College Library School and worked as a cataloguer at the
University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...
and
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
, also serving as a secretary in the Wellesley Historical Society. Ethel Wilson (Edwin's wife) died in 1957 and he died seven years later on 28 December 1964. His daughters survived him by almost fifty years, and both died within a month of each other in 2014. Wilson and his wife and daughters are buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
.


Academic works and legacy

Wilson published scholarly papers on a wide range of topics in mathematics, statistics, physics, and economics, but most of his work was in mathematics. During his career, Wilson wrote three widely used textbooks. At the age of twenty-two he compiled the textbook ''
Vector Analysis Vector calculus, or vector analysis, is concerned with differentiation and integration of vector fields, primarily in 3-dimensional Euclidean space \mathbb^3. The term "vector calculus" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader subjec ...
'' based on the lectures of his doctoral advisor
Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...
, as Gibbs was at the time busy preparing his book on thermodynamics. This textbook was widely used by mathematicians and physicists and had a lasting effect on notation in the field. Wilson gave a
plenary address at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...
in 1904 in Heidelberg where he summarised some further unpublished work by Gibbs (which he later published). Later in his career, Wilson published the textbook '' Advanced Calculus'' based on his own lecture materials, and the textbook '' Aeronautics'' based on his lectures to US Army and Navy students in the first world war, as well as special tutoring sessions held with his students at MIT. In he introduced the
Wilson score interval In statistics, a binomial proportion confidence interval is a confidence interval for the probability of success calculated from the outcome of a series of success–failure experiments (Bernoulli trial, Bernoulli trials). In other words, a binomia ...
, a binomial proportion confidence interval, and also derived the "plus four rule", which uses a
pseudocount In statistics, additive smoothing, also called Laplace smoothing or Lidstone smoothing, is a technique used to smooth categorical data. Given a set of observation counts \textstyle from a \textstyle -dimensional multinomial distribution with ...
of two (add two to both your count of successes and failures, so four total) for estimating the probability of a Bernoulli variable with a
confidence interval In frequentist statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a range of estimates for an unknown parameter. A confidence interval is computed at a designated ''confidence level''; the 95% confidence level is most common, but other levels, such as 9 ...
of two standard deviations in each direction (approximately 95% coverage). Wilson published a substantial number of papers on geometry, statistics, biostatistics, and other areas. He also conducted a number of reviews of scientific theories and works, and he was known to be critical of aspects of the works of Hilbert and
Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for d ...
. In 1904 Wilson published a review of
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
's works '' The Principles of Mathematics'' and ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry'' where he highlighted the strong role of Peano in shaping the foundations of mathematics. At the time Peano's works were not well-known in the US and so this review helped to establish interest in Peano's work.


Selected works

* 1901: ''
Vector Analysis Vector calculus, or vector analysis, is concerned with differentiation and integration of vector fields, primarily in 3-dimensional Euclidean space \mathbb^3. The term "vector calculus" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader subjec ...
: A Text-book for the Use of Students of Mathematics & Physics, Founded Upon the Lectures of J. W. Gibbs.'' * 1904: The Foundations of Mathematics. ''
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society The ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. Scope It publishes surveys on contemporary research topics, written at a level accessible to non-experts. ...
'' 11(2), pp. 74–93. (A review of '' The Principles of Mathematics'' and ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry'' by
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
.) * 1912:
Advanced Calculus
'. (Link from
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
.) * 1912: (with
Gilbert N. Lewis Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23 or October 25, 1875 – March 23, 1946) was an American physical chemist and a Dean of the College of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond a ...

The Space-Time Manifold of Relativity. The Non-Euclidean Geometry of Mechanics and Electromagnetics
''
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences ''Dædalus'' is an academic journal founded in 1955 to replace the ''Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences'', the volume and numbering system of which it continues. In 1958, it began quarterly publication as ''The Journal of the ...
'' 48(11), pp. 389-507.J. B. Shaw (1913
The Wilson-Lewis Algebra of Four-dimensional Space
''Bulletin of the Quaternion Society via
HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locall ...
* 1920:
Aeronautics: A Class Text
'.
John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, i ...
. (Link from
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
.) * 1927
Probable inference, the law of succession, and statistical inference.
'' Journal of the American Statistical Association'' 22(158), pp. 209-212.


See also

*
Wilson score interval In statistics, a binomial proportion confidence interval is a confidence interval for the probability of success calculated from the outcome of a series of success–failure experiments (Bernoulli trial, Bernoulli trials). In other words, a binomia ...


Notes


References

* Jerome Hunsaker and Saunders MacLane (1973
Edwin Bidwell Wilson, Biographical Memoirs
pp. 283–320,
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
of USA. * R. Bruce Lindsay and W. J. King (1964
Oral Histories, Edwin Wilson
Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. ccessed 19 August 2021* *


External links


Edwin Bidwell Wilson correspondence, 1940-1945 (inclusive), 1942-1945 (bulk). H MS c364. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Edwin Bidwell 1879 births 1964 deaths 19th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians American physicists Harvard College alumni Yale University alumni Yale University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Presidents of the American Statistical Association American statisticians Fellows of the Econometric Society