Erastus L. De Forest

Erastus Lyman De Forest
Erastus Lyman De Forest
Born	June 27, 1834; Watertown, Connecticut
Died	June 6, 1888 (aged 53); Watertown, Connecticut
Alma mater	Yale University
	Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Yale University

Erastus Lyman De Forest (1834–1888) was an American mathematician, who studied at Yale University.

Life and work

Son of a Yale graduate, De Forest graduated himself at Yale University in 1854 and was awarded PhB in 1856.[1] After, De Forest vanished for two years while a trip to New York, and his family feared the worst but, finally, he turned up in Australia, teaching in Melbourne.[2] In 1861 he returned to New Haven and devoted himself to study of mathematics.

In 1867–68 he was asked by his uncle, who was the president of Knickerbocker Life Insurance Company of New York, to improve the mortality tables used in his business.[3]

Between 1870 and 1885, De Forest published more than twenty articles on statistics, using in some of them an early version of the Monte Carlo method to smooth time series.[4]

DeForest Senior Prize in Mathematics

The DeForest Senior Prize in Mathematics was established by John DeForest (Erastus's father) at Yale University in 1855 and increased in 1886 by Erastus. It is awarded to seniors for proficiency in pure and applied mathematics.[5]

gollark: There are upper and lower bounds for how much water I should drink. The precise amount of cancer I should contain is exactly zero, though.

gollark: There are examples of this. There are examples of this not being the case.

gollark: If these are in fact true useful concepts then yes, but it doesn't seem that way.

gollark: Alchemists had their own weird system based on mercury and sulfur or something weird like that.

gollark: I could probably draw my own equally arbitrary ones.

References

Stigler 1978, p. 253.
Stigler 1978, p. 254.
Stigler 1978, pp. 254–255.
Gentle 2002, p. 329.
"Prizes by Department or Subject | Office of the Secretary and Vice President for Student Life". secretary.yale.edu. Retrieved 30 November 2018.

Bibliography

Gentle, James E. (2002). Elements of Computational Statistics. Springer. ISBN 0-387-95489-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Stigler, Stephen M (1978). "Mathematical Statistics in the Early States". The Annals of Statistics. 6 (2): 239–265. doi:10.1214/aos/1176344123. ISSN 0090-5364. JSTOR 2958876.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

External links

O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Erastus L. De Forest", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
"De Forest, Erastus Lyman". American National Biography Online. Retrieved 9 June 2017.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[FOOTNOTEStigler1978253-1] Stigler 1978, p. 253.

[FOOTNOTEStigler1978254-2] Stigler 1978, p. 254.

[FOOTNOTEStigler1978254–255-3] Stigler 1978, pp. 254–255.

[FOOTNOTEGentle2002329-4] Gentle 2002, p. 329.

[5] "Prizes by Department or Subject | Office of the Secretary and Vice President for Student Life". secretary.yale.edu. Retrieved 30 November 2018.