Jacob Wolfowitz

2025-09-08T15:15:53Z

2003:C1:DF04:300:38B7:CCA2:578E:D901: Paul Wolfowitz had an older sister named Laura according to https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/09/the-next-crusade.

{{more footnotes|date=March 2013}}
{{short description|American statistician (born 1910)}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Jacob Wolfowitz
| image = Jacob Wolfowitz.jpg
| image_size = 225px
| caption = Wolfowitz in 1970 (photo courtesy of MFO)
| birth_date = {{birth_date|1910|03|19}}
| birth_place = [[Warsaw]], [[Congress Poland]], Russian Empire
| death_date = {{death_date_and_age|1981|07|16 |1910|03|19}}
| death_place = [[Tampa, Florida]], U.S.
| nationality = American
| fields = Statistics
| workplaces = [[Cornell University]] [[Columbia University]] [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]] [[University of South Florida]]
| education = [[City University of New York]] [[New York University]]
| doctoral_advisor = Donald Flanders
| doctoral_students = [[Albert H. Bowker]] [[Jack Kiefer (statistician)|Jack Kiefer]] [[Gottfried E. Noether]] [[Howard Levene]] [[Samuel Kotz]]
| known_for = [[Wald–Wolfowitz runs test]] [[Dvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequality]]
| spouse = Lillian Dundes
| children = Laura, [[Paul Wolfowitz]]
}}

'''Jacob Wolfowitz''' (March 19, 1910 – July 16, 1981) was a Polish-born [[American Jews|American Jewish]] [[statistician]] and [[Claude E. Shannon Award|Shannon Award]]-winning [[information theory|information theorist]]. He was the father of former [[United States Deputy Secretary of Defense]] and [[World Bank Group]] President [[Paul Wolfowitz]].

==Early life and education==
Wolfowitz was born in 1910 in [[Warsaw]], Poland, the son of Helen (Pearlman) and Samuel Wolfowitz.<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ByjTLa2HF1kC&q=%22Samuel+and+Helen+(Pearlman)%22&pg=PT384 |title = Biographical Memoirs|isbn = 9780309086981|date = 2003-05-07| publisher=National Academies Press }}</ref> He emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1920. He received a bachelor of science in 1931 from the [[City College of New York]].

==Career==
In the mid-1930s, Wolfowitz began his career as a high school mathematics teacher and continued teaching until 1942 when he received his Ph.D. degree in [[mathematics]] from [[New York University]]. While a part-time graduate student, Wolfowitz met [[Abraham Wald]], with whom he collaborated in numerous joint papers in the field of [[mathematical statistics]]. This collaboration continued until Wald's death in an airplane crash in 1950. In 1951, Wolfowitz became a [[professor]] of mathematics at [[Cornell University]], where he stayed until 1970. From 1970 to 1978 he was at the [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]]. He died of a [[myocardial infarction|heart attack]] in [[Tampa]], Florida, where he had become a professor at the [[University of South Florida]] after retiring from Illinois.

Wolfowitz's main contributions were in the fields of [[decision theory|statistical decision theory]], [[non-parametric statistics]], [[sequential analysis]], and [[information theory]].

One of his results is the strong converse to [[Claude Shannon]]'s [[Shannon's source coding theorem|coding theorem]]. While Shannon could prove only that the [[block error]] probability can not become arbitrarily small if the transmission rate is above the channel capacity, Wolfowitz proved that the block error rate actually converges to one. As a consequence, Shannon's original result is today termed "the weak theorem" (sometimes also Shannon's "conjecture" by some authors).

==Further reading==
*[[Jack Kiefer (mathematician)|Kiefer, J.]], ed. ''Jacob Wolfowitz Selected Papers''. New York: [[Springer-Verlag]], 1980. {{ISBN|0-387-90463-8}}.
*Wolfowitz, Jacob, ''Coding Theorems of Information Theory.'' New York: Springer-Verlag, 1978. {{ISBN|0-387-08548-3}}.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*{{MathGenealogy |id=4843}}.
*{{MacTutor Biography|id=Wolfowitz}}
*Zacks, Shelemyahu. [http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/wolfowitz-jacob.pdf "Biographical Memories: Jacob Wolfowitz (March 19, 1910–July 16, 1981)"]. ''[[United States National Academy of Sciences|National Academy of Sciences]]'', n.d. Accessed May 3, 2007.

{{Claude E. Shannon Award recipients}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfowitz, Jacob}}
[[Category:1910 births]]
[[Category:1981 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American mathematicians]]
[[Category:20th-century American Jews]]
[[Category:Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni]]
[[Category:Cornell University faculty]]
[[Category:University of South Florida faculty]]
[[Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:American Ashkenazi Jews]]
[[Category:Polish Ashkenazi Jews]]
[[Category:Jewish American scientists]]
[[Category:Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Statistical Association]]
[[Category:Polish emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:American probability theorists]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society]]
[[Category:American mathematical statisticians]]
[[Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty]]
[[Category:Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:City College of New York alumni]]
[[Category:New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science alumni]]
[[Category:People from Warsaw]]

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Jacob Wolfowitz