Peter Whittle (mathematician)

For the British politician, see Peter Whittle (British politician).
Peter Whittle
Born (1927-02-27) 27 February 1927
Wellington, New Zealand
Residence Cambridge, England
Citizenship New Zealand
Fields Statistics
Applied Mathematics
Operations Research
Control theory
Institutions Uppsala University (1949–53)
DSIR, New Zealand (1953–1959)
University of Cambridge (1959–1961)
University of Manchester (1961–67)
University of Cambridge (1967–94)
Alma mater University of New Zealand (MSc 1948)
Uppsala University (PhD 1953)
Thesis Hypothesis Testing in Time Series Analysis (1951)
Doctoral advisor Herman Wold
Doctoral students Alan John Branford
Frank Kelly
Sir John Kingman (initial studies)
Stratis Kounias
Mario Lefebvre
David Eric Probert
Roland Tegeder
Known for Multivariate Wold theorem in time series analysis
Reproducing kernel Hilbert space techniques
Whittle likelihood
Hypothesis testing in time series analysis
Optimal control
Queuing theory
Network flows
Kiefer-Wolfowitz theorem in Bayesian experimental design
Influences Maurice Bartlett
Bertil Matérn[nb 1]
Influenced Karl Gustav Jöreskog[nb 2]
Notable awards Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) (1978)
Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Guy Medal (Silver, 1966) (Gold, 1996)
Sylvester Medal (1994)
John von Neumann Theory Prize (1997)
Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (1986)
Spouse Käthe Blomquist (m. 1951]
Children 6

Peter Whittle (born 27 February 1927, in Wellington, New Zealand) is a mathematician and statistician, working in the fields of stochastic nets, optimal control, time series analysis, stochastic optimisation and stochastic dynamics. From 1967 to 1994, he was the Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research at the University of Cambridge.

Career

Whittle graduated from the University of New Zealand in 1947 with a BSc in mathematics and physics and in 1948 with a MSc in mathematics.[4] [1]

He then moved to Uppsala, Sweden in 1950 to study for his PhD[1] with Herman Wold (at Uppsala University). His thesis, Hypothesis Testing in Time Series, generalised Wold's autoregressive representation theorem for univariate stationary processes to multivariate processes. Whittle's thesis was published in 1951[2]. A synopsis of Whittle's thesis also appeared as an appendix to the second edition of Wold's book on time-series analysis. He remained in Uppsala at the Statistics Institute as a docent until 1953, when Whittle returned to New Zealand.

In New Zealand, Whittle worked at the Department of Industrial and Scientific Research (DSIR) in the Applied Mathematics Laboratory (later named the Applied Mathematics Division).

In 1959 Whittle was appointed to a lectureship in Cambridge University[1]. Whittle was appointed Professor of Mathematical statistics at the University of Manchester in 1961.[1][3] After 6 years in Manchester, Whittle returned to Cambridge as the Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research, a post he held until his retirement in 1994. From 1973, he was also Director of the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Whittle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1978, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1981. The Royal Society awarded him their Sylvester Medal in 1994 in recognition of his "major distinctive contributions to time series analysis, to optimisation theory, and to a wide range of topics in applied probability theory and the mathematics of operational research". In 1986, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences awarded Whittle the Lanchester Prize for his book Systems in Stochastic Equilibrium (ISBN 0-471-90887-8) and the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1997[5] for his "outstanding contributions to the theory of operations research and management science".

Personal life

In 1951 Whittle married a Finnish woman, Käthe Blomquist, whom he had met in Sweden. The Whittle family has six children.[1]

Bibliography

Books

  1. Whittle, P. (1951). Hypothesis testing in times series analysis. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri AB. 
  2. Whittle, P. (1963). Prediction and Regulation. English Universities Press. ISBN 0-8166-1147-5. 
    Republished as: Whittle, P. (1983). Prediction and Regulation by Linear Least-Square Methods. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1148-3. 
  3. Whittle, P. (1970). Probability (Library of university mathematics). Penguin. ISBN 0-14-080085-9. 
    Republished as: Whittle, P. (30 April 1976). Probability. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-01657-8. 
  4. Whittle, P. (28 July 1971). Optimization Under Constraints. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-94130-1. 
  5. Whittle, P. (4 August 1982). Optimization Over Time. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-10120-6. 
  6. Whittle, P. (April 1983). Optimization Over Time: Dynamic Programming and Stochastic Control. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-10496-5. 
  7. Whittle, P. (4 June 1986). Systems in Stochastic Equilibrium. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-90887-8. 
  8. Whittle, P. (April 1990). Risk-Sensitive Optimal Control. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-92622-1. 
  9. Whittle, P. (14 May 1992). Probability Via Expectation (3rd ed.). Springer Verlag. ISBN 0-387-97758-9. 
    Republished as: Whittle, P. (20 April 2000). Probability Via Expectation (4th ed.). Springer. ISBN 0-387-98955-2. 
  10. Whittle, P. (18 July 1996). Optimal Control: Basics and Beyond. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-95679-1. 
  11. Whittle, P. (8 December 1998). Neural Nets and Chaotic Carriers. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-98541-4. 
  12. Whittle, P. (31 May 2007). Networks: Optimisation and Evolution. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521871006. 

Selected articles

Biographical works

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Whittle learned Swedish in six months "by translating Matérn's 1947 work on sampling surveys in forestry." (Page 5 in [1]) Matérn's essay also stimulated Whittle's work on spatial stochastic processes. (Page 299 in [2])
  2. ↑ "My gratitude is also extended to Professor Peter Whittle, University of Manchester. When [Professor Whittle was] visiting Uppsala in October 1960, we had fruitful discussions, which led me to consider an important technique used in this monograph." [3]

References

  1. ↑ Whittle, Peter (1994). "Almost home". In Kelly, F. P. Probability, statistics and optimisation: A Tribute to Peter Whittle. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 1–28. ISBN 0-471-94829-2.
  2. ↑ Peter Whittle (1982). "Semi-spatial models of socio-economic transition". In Bo Ranneby. Statistics in theory and practice: Essays in honour of Bertil Matérn. Umeå: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. pp. 299–304. ISBN 91-576-1175-0. MR 688997.
  3. ↑ Jöreskog, K. G. (1963). Statistical estimation in factor analysis: A new technique and its foundation. Almqvist & Wiksell. p. 5.
  4. ↑ Anonymous. Biographical sketch. In Kelly.
  1. ^ a b c d e J.H. Darwin. "NZMS Newsletter 22 Centrefold, December 1981". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  2. ^ a Cambridge Statistical Laboratory. "The History of the Statistical Laboratory, section 6". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  3. ^ Cambridge Statistical Laboratory. "The History of the Statistical Laboratory, section 4". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  4. ^ a Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. "John von Neumann Theory Prize Winners, 1997 section". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  5. ^ Cambridge Statistical Laboratory. "The History of the Statistical Laboratory, section 7". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  6. ^ Royal Society. "Directory of Fellows of the Royal Society". Retrieved 14 July 2011. 
  7. ^ Royal Society of New Zealand. "List of Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1870–2000". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  8. ^ The Royal Society. "Sylvester recent winners". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
  9. ^ Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. "Frederik W. Lanchester Prize". Retrieved 3 January 2006. 
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