Logic List Mailing Archive

David Blackwell (1919-2010)

DAVID BLACKWELL, 1919-2010

Blackwell, the first black scholar to be admitted to the National Academy of
Sciences and an author of groundbreaking papers in probability, game theory,
and information theory, died July 8 at the age of 91. He was a faculty
member at the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 until his
retirement in 1988, serving as chair of the Department of Statistics from
1957 to 1961 and assistant dean of the College of Letters and Science from
1964 to 1968. During his career Blackwell advised 65 PhD students, and
authored two books and more than 80 papers. In 1965 he was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences.

Blackwell's work on infinite games played an important role in the 
development of modern descriptive set theory in the 1970s.

Read more at
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2010/07/15_blackwell.shtml .