Tore Olaus Engset (May 8, 1865 – October, 1943 in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

) was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

mathematician and engineer who did pioneering work in the field of telephone traffic queuing theory. Tore Olaus Engset was born at

Stranda Stranda is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Stranda. Stranda consists of three smaller villages and one larger central village ...

Møre og Romsdal Møre og Romsdal (; en, Møre and Romsdal) is a county in the northernmost part of Western Norway. It borders the counties of Trøndelag, Innlandet, and Vestland. The county administration is located in the town of Molde, while Ålesund is t ...

, Norway. After he graduated school at the age of 18, Engset was admitted to the telegraph school in

Stavanger Stavanger (, , US usually , ) is a city and municipality in Norway. It is the fourth largest city and third largest metropolitan area in Norway (through conurbation with neighboring Sandnes) and the administrative center of Rogaland county. T ...

in 1883. He received his certificate in a year and took employment. In his spare time he continued his studies, graduating in 1892 but continuing his university studies. Engset received an

M.Sc. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

in physics and mathematics in 1894 at

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top univers ...

, after which he worked at Televerket as office worker, traffic analyst and from 1921 to 1922 and 1930–35

director general A director general or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals'' ) or general director is a senior executive officer, often the chief executive officer, within a governmen ...

. He developed the

Engset formula In queueing theory, the Engset formula is used to determine the blocking probability of an M/M/c/c/N queue (in Kendall's notation). The formula is named after its developer, T. O. Engset. Example application Consider a fleet of c vehicles and ...

in 1915, before the breakthroughs of

A. K. Erlang Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 – 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering and queueing theory. By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Er ...

from 1917. His 1915 manuscript "Om beregningen av vælgere i et automatisk telefonsystem" (1915) was not, however, published until 1918. That work was translated to German as "Die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung zur Bestimmung der Wählerzahl in automatischen Fernsprechämtern", in '' Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift'', Heft 31, 1918. An English translation appeared in

Arne Myskja Arne may refer to: Places * Arne, Dorset, England, a village ** Arne RSPB reserve, a nature reserve adjacent to the village * Arné, Hautes-Pyrénées, Midi-Pyrénées, France * Arne (Boeotia), an ancient city in Boeotia, Greece * Arne (Thessaly), ...

, "On the Calculation of Switches in an Automatic Telephone System" in ''Telektronikk'', 94(2):99-142, 1998. He also published a work on

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

(1927): "Die Bahnen und die Lichtstrahlung der Wasserstoffelektronen. Ergänzende Betrachtungen über Bahnformen und Strahlungsfrequenzen" (3 parts) in ''

Annalen der Physik ''Annalen der Physik'' (English: ''Annals of Physics'') is one of the oldest scientific journals on physics; it has been published since 1799. The journal publishes original, peer-reviewed papers on experimental, theoretical, applied, and mat ...

'', 82 (1927) 1017; 83 (1927) 903; 84 (1927) 880.

References

Bibliography

*Arne Myskja: T. Engset in New Light. The 14th Nordic Teletraffic Seminar (NTS-14), Lyngby, Denmark, August 18–20, 1998. *Arne Myskja: The Engset Report of 1915. Summary and Comments. Telektronikk, vol. 94, no. 2, pp. 143–153, 1998. *Arne Myskja, Ola Espvik: Tore Olaus Engset - The man behind the formula. Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim, Norway, 2002. . 1865 births 1943 deaths People from Stranda University of Oslo alumni Norwegian mathematicians Norwegian engineers Queueing theorists {{Europe-mathematician-stub