Gwilym Meirion Jenkins (12 August 1932 – 10 July 1982) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

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 wor ...

and

systems engineer Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking p ...

, born in

Gowerton Gowerton ( cy, Tregŵyr) is a large village and community, about 4 miles north west of Swansea city centre, Wales. Gowerton is often known as the gateway to the Gower Peninsula. Gowerton's original name was Ffosfelin. The village falls within the ...

( cy, Tregŵyr), Swansea,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. He is most notable for his pioneering work with

George Box George Edward Pelham Box (18 October 1919 – 28 March 2013) was a British statistician, who worked in the areas of quality control, time-series analysis, design of experiments, and Bayesian inference. He has been called "one of the g ...

autoregressive moving average model In statistics, econometrics and signal processing, an autoregressive (AR) model is a representation of a type of random process; as such, it is used to describe certain time-varying processes in nature, economics, etc. The autoregressive model spe ...

s, also called Box–Jenkins models, in

time-series analysis In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Ex ...

. He earned a first class honours degree in mathematics in 1953 followed by a PhD at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

in 1956. After graduating, he married Margaret Bellingham and together they raised three children. His first job after university was junior fellow at the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), before finally losing its identity in me ...

. He followed this by a series of visiting lecturer and professor positions at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a ...

, Stanford University,

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

, and the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

, before settling in as a professor of

Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking ...

at Lancaster University in 1965. His initial work concerned discrete time domain models for

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

applications. While at Lancaster, he founded and became managing director of ISCOL (International Systems Corporation of Lancaster). He remained in academia until 1974, when he left to start his own consulting company. He served on the Research Section Committee and Council 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. ...

in the 1960s, founded the '' Journal of Systems Engineering'' in 1969, and briefly carried out public duties with the Royal Treasury in the mid-1970s. He was elected to the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

and the

Institute of Statisticians The Institute of Statisticians was a British professional organization founded in 1948 to protect the interests of professional statisticians. It was originally named ''The Association of Incorporated Statisticians Limited'', but this was later cha ...

. He was a jazz and blues enthusiast and an accomplished pianist. He died from

Hodgkin's lymphoma Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a type of lymphoma, in which cancer originates from a specific type of white blood cell called lymphocytes, where multinucleated Reed–Sternberg cells (RS cells) are present in the patient's lymph nodes. The condition w ...

in 1982.

Books by G. M. Jenkins

* ''Spectral analysis and its applications'' (with D. G. Watts) 1968 * ''Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control'' (with G. E. P. Box and Gregory C. Reinsel) 2008 * ''Practical experience with modelling and forecasting time series'' 1979 * ''Case studies in time series analysis'' (with G. McLeod) 1983

Obituary

* G. E. P. Box (1983) G. M. Jenkins, 1933-1982

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society The ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of statistics. It comprises three series and is published by Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society. History The Statistical Society of London was founde ...

. Series A (General), Vol. 146, No. 2, pp. 205–206.

References

External links

George Box's Interview for the International Journal of Forecasting
*
Biography of Gwilym M. Jenkins
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins, Gwilym 1933 births 1982 deaths People from Swansea Alumni of University College London Welsh statisticians Deaths from Hodgkin lymphoma Systems engineers Academics of Lancaster University 20th-century British mathematicians