Background
Savage, Leonard Jimmie was born on November 20, 1917 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Son of Louis and Mae (Rugawitz) Savage.
mathematician statistician university professor
Savage, Leonard Jimmie was born on November 20, 1917 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Son of Louis and Mae (Rugawitz) Savage.
He graduated from the University of Michigan and later worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Yale University, and the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said Savage was "one of the few people I have met whom I would unhesitatingly call a genius."
Though his thesis advisor was Sumner Myers, he also credited Milton Friedman and West. Allen Wallis as statistical mentors. His most noted work was the 1954 book Foundations of Statistics, in which he put forward a theory of subjective and personal probability and statistics which forms one of the strands underlying Bayesian statistics and has applications to game theory. During World World War II, Savage served as chief "statistical" assistant to John von Neumann, the mathematician credited with describing the principles upon which electronic computers should be based.
One of Savage"s indirect contributions was his discovery of the work of Louis Bachelier on stochastic models for asset prices and the mathematical theory of option pricing.
Savage brought the work of Bachelier to the attention of Paul Samuelson. lieutenant was from Samuelson"s subsequent writing that "random walk" (and subsequently Brownian motion) became fundamental to mathematical finance.
In 1951 he introduced the minimax regret criterion used in decision theory. The Hewitt–Savage zero-one law is (in part) named after him, as is the Friedman–Savage utility function.
Fellow Institute Mathematics Statistics (president 1957-1958), American Statistical Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Member International Statistical Institute, American Mathematics Society.
Married Jean Strickland, July 10, 1964. Children by previous marriage: Sam Linton, Frank Albert.