Herbert Robbins, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Herbert Robbins

American mathematician

Date of Birth: 12-Jan-1915

Place of Birth: New Castle, Pennsylvania, United States

Date of Death: 12-Feb-2001

Profession: mathematician, university teacher, statistician

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

Herbert Ellis Robbins (January 12, 1915 – February 12, 2001) was an American mathematician and statistician.
He did research in topology, measure theory, statistics, and a variety of other fields.
He was the co-author, with Richard Courant, of What is Mathematics?, a popularization that is still (as of 2012) in print.
The Robbins lemma, used in empirical Bayes methods, is named after him.
Robbins algebras are named after him because of a conjecture (since proved) that he posed concerning Boolean algebras.
The Robbins theorem, in graph theory, is also named after him, as is the Whitney–Robbins synthesis, a tool he introduced to prove this theorem.
The well-known unsolved problem of minimizing in sequential selection the expected rank of the selected item under full information, sometimes referred to as the fourth secretary problem, also bears his name: Robbins' problem (of optimal stopping).