Frank Albert Benford Jr. (July 10, 1883 – December 4, 1948) was an American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

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 ...

best known for rediscovering and generalizing Benford's Law, an earlier statistical statement by

Simon Newcomb Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadians, Canadian–Americans, American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath. He served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins ...

, about the occurrence of digits in lists of data.(subscription required) Benford is also known for having devised, in 1937, an instrument for measuring the refractive index of glass. An expert in optical measurements, he published 109 papers in the fields of optics and mathematics and was granted 20 patents on optical devices.

Early life

He was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. His date of birth is given variously as May 29 or July 10, 1883. At the age of 6 his family home was destroyed by the

Johnstown Flood The Johnstown Flood, sometimes referred to locally as the Great Flood of 1889, occurred on Friday, 31 May 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, upstream of th ...

Education

He graduated from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1910.

Career

Benford worked for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

, first in the Illuminating Engineering Laboratory for 18 years, then the Research Laboratory for 20 years until retiring in July 1948. He was working as a research physicist when he made the rediscovery of Benford's law, and spent years collecting data before publishing in 1938, citing more than 20,000 values from a diverse set of sources including statistics from baseball, atomic weights, the areas of rivers and numbering of articles in magazines.

Death

He died suddenly at his home on December 4, 1948.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benford, Frank Albert, Junior 1883 births 1948 deaths People from Johnstown, Pennsylvania University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American physicists Information theory Optical engineers