Leonard Jimmie Savage (born Leonard Ogashevitz; 1917 – 1971) 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 ...

and

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 ...

. Economist

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...

said Savage was "one of the few people I have met whom I would unhesitatingly call a genius."

Education and career

Savage was born and grew up in Detroit. He studied at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public university, public research university in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 375 programs. It is Michigan's third-l ...

in Detroit before transferring to

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 ...

, where he first majored in chemical engineering, then switched to mathematics, graduating in 1938 with a bachelor's degree. He continued at the

with a PhD on

differential geometry Differential geometry is a Mathematics, mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of Calculus, single variable calculus, vector calculus, lin ...

in 1941 under the supervision of Sumner Byron Myers. Savage subsequently worked at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, the University of Michigan,

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 ...

, and the Statistical Research Group at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Though his thesis advisor was Sumner Myers, he also credited Milton Friedman and W. Allen Wallis as statistical mentors. During World War II, Savage served as chief "statistical" assistant to

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

, the mathematician credited with describing the principles upon which electronic computers should be based. Later he was one of the participants in the '' Macy conferences'' on

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

Research and contributions

His most noted work was the 1954 boo
''The Foundations of Statistics''
in which he put forward a theory of subjective and personal probability and statistics which forms one of the strands underlying

Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics ( or ) is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability, where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about ...

and has applications to

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

. One of Savage's indirect contributions was his discovery of the work of Louis Bachelier on stochastic models for asset prices and the mathematical theory of option pricing. Savage brought the work of Bachelier to the attention of

Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...

. It was from Samuelson's subsequent writing that "

random walk In mathematics, a random walk, sometimes known as a drunkard's walk, is a stochastic process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some Space (mathematics), mathematical space. An elementary example of a rand ...

" (and subsequently Brownian motion) became fundamental to

mathematical finance Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that req ...

. In 1951 he introduced the minimax regret criterion used in

decision theory Decision theory or the theory of rational choice is a branch of probability theory, probability, economics, and analytic philosophy that uses expected utility and probabilities, probability to model how individuals would behave Rationality, ratio ...

. The Hewitt–Savage zero–one law and Friedman–Savage utility function are (in part) named after him, as is the Savage Award given annually by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for the best dissertations in Bayesian analysis.

Notes

External links

* Leonard Jimmie Savage papers (MS 695). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Savage, Leonard Jimmie 1917 births 1971 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Bayesian statisticians Philosophers of probability University of Michigan alumni Princeton University faculty University of Chicago faculty Columbia University faculty University of Michigan faculty Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Bayesian econometricians 20th-century American economists American mathematical statisticians

Education and career

Research and contributions

See also

Notes

External links