1883-1953

Austrian-American applied mathematician and philosopher of science who developed the first mathematically precise frequency theory of probability and contributed to the theory of powered airplanes, plasticity, elasticity, and turbulence. He was concerned with the application of abstract mathematical theories to observational data. Probability, according to his frequency theory, is an ideal notion that applies to the outcomes of an infinite sequence of trials if 1) the ratio of successes/trials has a limit, and 2) this limit is the same for all blindly chosen infinite subsequences.