Blackwell

David H. Blackwell

David H. Blackwell known as a worldwide famous African American in field of mathematics. Growing up in Centralia, Illinois which was fairly racist, oldest of four children and son of a railroad worker. Blackwell was privileged to attend and integrated school during the racial segregation in the 1930s. He was always good at math it caught his attention he used math as a useful tool and interesting subject to talk about. Blackwell didn’t care for algebra or trigonometry he saw the two subjects useful but he found that geometry was what caught his attention the most.

The subject geometry caught Blackwell connecting him with activity and motion which is what he learned in high school from his math teacher making the subject more complex to answer the problem that seemed unsolvable. As he showed his talents in math he attended the University of Illinois with the ambition of becoming an elementary teacher decided to continue with math courses instead. Receiving a four-year scholarship from the state of Illinois. In 1932 he was able to receive his bachelor’s degree in math. By the age of Twenty-two he went on to continue school his was earning his doctorate in 1941. After he completion of his Ph.D. his advisor Joseph Doob helped Blackwell secure the Rosenwald Fellowship at Princeton University. Is usually known as typically accepting nominal appointments at Princeton. The school denied Blackwell appointment due to his race and refused to back down denying his selection.

From 1942 to 1944 Blackwell taught at the Southern University in Louisiana, Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia and also Howard University in Washington, D.C. David Blackwell a statistician and mathematician was the first black scholar to be admitted in the National Academy of Science (1965). With Blackwell being known as the free ranging math problem solver wrote well known papers on probability and game theory. He taught nearly 35 years the university of California, Berkeley...