Erastus Lyman De Forest (1834–1888) 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who studied at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

Life and work

Son of a Yale graduate, De Forest graduated himself at

in 1854 and was awarded PhB in 1856. De Forest later vanished for two years while on a trip to New York, and his family feared the worst, but he eventually turned up in Australia, teaching in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

. In 1861, he returned to

New Haven New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Co ...

and devoted himself to the study of mathematics. In 1867–68, he was asked by his uncle, who was the president of Knickerbocker Life Insurance Company of New York, to improve the mortality tables used in his business. Between 1870 and 1885, De Forest published more than twenty articles on

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

, using in some of them an early version of the

Monte Carlo method Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be ...

to smooth time series.

DeForest Senior Prize in Mathematics

The DeForest Senior Prize in Mathematics was established by John DeForest (Erastus's father) at Yale University in 1855 and increased in 1886 by Erastus. It is awarded to seniors for proficiency in pure and applied mathematics.

References

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:De Forest, Erastus Lyman 1834 births 1888 deaths 19th-century American mathematicians Yale University alumni