Wally Smith (mathematician)

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Wally Smith
Born(1926-11-12)November 12, 1926
London, England
DiedMarch 6, 2023(2023-03-06) (aged 96)
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
AwardsAdams Prize (1960)
Guggenheim Fellowship
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
ThesisStochastic Sequences of Events (1954)
Doctoral advisorHenry Daniels
David Cox
Websitehttp://www.stat.unc.edu/faculty/wsmith.html

Walter Laws Smith (November 12, 1926 – March 6, 2023) was a British-born American mathematician, known for his contributions to applied probability theory.[1]

Biography[edit]

Smith was born in London on November 12, 1926.[2]

Smith received a B.A. in mathematics (1947) from Cambridge University, having gained First Class in the Mathematical Tripos Part 1 and Part 2. He then received an M.A. (1951) and Ph.D (1953) from Cambridge. His dissertation was entitled Stochastic Sequences of Events advised by Henry Daniels and D. R. Cox, with whom he published the book Queues (1961) and also published with in his early years.[3] He became a professor of statistics at The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (1954–56 and 1958–), and he was an emeritus professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research.[4]

Smith was a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a fellow of the American Statistical Association (1966), a winner of the Adams Prize at the University of Cambridge (1960), a Sir Winston Churchill overseas fellow and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (see List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1974)

Smith died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on March 6, 2023, at the age of 96.[5]

Publications[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Walter Smith Obituary | UNC Statistics & Operations Research". stor.unc.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-22.
  2. ^ Jaques Cattell Press (1982). "American Men and Women of Science: The physical and biological sciences". American Men & Women of Science (v. 6, v. 15, no. 6). Bowker. ISSN 0192-8570. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
  3. ^ Wally Smith at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ homepage at unc.edu
  5. ^ "Walter Laws Smith". Legacy. Retrieved 19 March 2023.