David Blackwell Biography

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David Blackwell currently lives in Berkeley, California, where he is still active as a scholar, even though he retired a few years ago from the University of California at Berkeley as a distinguished professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1954 after having spent ten years at Howard University, in Washington, DC, one year at Stanford, one year at Clark College, now Clark-Atlanta University, one year at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and one year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Born in April 1919 in Centralia, Illinois, Blackwell spent ten years there attending public schools. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1935 where he received his AB degree in 1938, his AM in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1941; all in mathematics. At the age of 22 he had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and had been awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to attend the Institute for Advanced Study. This was the beginning of his more than fifty professional years as a world-class mathematician. While at Howard University, Blackwell distinguished himself as an excellent teacher, an able leader (department chair, 1947-1954) and a very productive scholar, publishing more than twenty papers during his tenure there. When he joined the faculty at Berkeley, these characteristics became even more manifest. At Berkeley, and worldwide, he was recognized as a distinguished scholar and a gifted teacher. He chaired the Department of Statistics (1957-1961) and he published an additional 50 plus papers (a total of 80 papers prior to retirement). His professional activities as a scholar brought him widespread recognition and acclaim. He has received honorary Doctorate of Science degrees from twelve institutions: Harvard, Yale, University of Illinois, Howard University, Carnegie-Mellon, University

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