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

statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...

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 thinkin ...

, born in

Gowerton Gowerton ( ) is a large village and community, about northwest 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 Gowerton electora ...

(),

Swansea Swansea ( ; ) is a coastal City status in the United Kingdom, city and the List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, second-largest city of Wales. It forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area, officially known as the City and County of ...

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

. 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 gre ...

autoregressive moving average model In the statistical analysis of time series, autoregressive–moving-average (ARMA) models are a way to describe a (weakly) stationary stochastic process using autoregression (AR) and a moving average (MA), each with a polynomial. They are a too ...

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 University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

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 Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

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

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, and the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

, 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 Enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering uti ...

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

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 the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

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 An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

. 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 lymph nodes. The condition was named a ...

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 Oxford University Press for the Royal Statistical Society. History The Statistical Society of ...

. 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 Welsh mathematicians