RIP Dr. David H. Blackwell

David Blackwell was born on April 24 in 1919. He was an African-American mathematician and professor. Dr. Blackwell grew up in Centralia, Illinois. As a schoolboy, he did not care for algebra and trigonometry. He said, "I could do it and I could see that it was useful, but it wasn't really exciting." About Geometry he said, "The most interesting thing I remember from calculus was Newton's method for solving equations. That was the only thing in calculus I really liked. The rest of it looked like stuff that was useful for engineers in finding moments of inertia and volumes and such"

Take a moment and listen to Dr. Blackwell discuss his education experience.

After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Blackwell was appointed a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1941 for a year. At that time, members of the Institute were automatically officially made visiting fellows of Princeton University, and thus Blackwell was listed in its bulletin as such. This caused problems because there had never been a black student, much less faculty fellow, at the University [most notably it had rejected Paul Robeson solely on race]. The president of Princeton wrote the director of the Institute that the organization was abusing the University's hospitality by admitting a black.

When it was time to leave the institute, Blackwell applied to all 105 Black schools in America. After instructorships at Southern University and Clark College, in 1944, Dr. Blackwell joined the faculty of Howard University as an instructor. In three years, Blackwell rose to become a Full Professor and Chairman. With the exception of a one year visit to Stanford University, Blackwell stayed at Howard until 1954. When he left, he had been Chair of the Department of Mathematics and had published more than 20 papers. From there he was appointed Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was chairman of the Statistics Department.

He was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1955. He has also been Vice President of the American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute, and the American Mathematical Society. Blackwell is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

In 1965 he became the first African American named to the National Academy of Sciences. Blackwell was also a pioneer in textbook writing as he wrote one of the first Bayesian textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. In 1979 Blackwell won the Von Neumann Theory Prize (the Operations Research Society of America) in 1979. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Centralia, Illinois. Dr. Blackwell is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.


Blackwell died of natural causes at a hospital on July 8, University of California, Berkeley officials said. He was 91.


RIP Dr. Blackwell! HUSL Today Salutes you for leaving behind a legacy that is inspiring to people of all colors!

I feel terrible that I only learned of his amazing accomplishments after his death. A PhD at 22?? Thats awesome!  As much as I try to keep up with our academic heroes it is hard to keep track of all of them.


Sources: *http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/blackwell_david.html
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/15/AR2010071506274.html