Person: Carver, Harry Clyde
Harry Carver was an American mathematician who worked in mathematical statistics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- He was setting up this actuarial sciences programme when Carver was a student and he was pleased to be able to appoint Carver as an Instructor in 1916 to continue the building process.
- One of Carver's early tasks was to assist Glover in this task.
- In 1921, Carver was promoted to associate professor.
- Not only did Carver edit the new journal, but he personally assumed the financial responsibility for it, and he met considerable deficits out of his own pocket.
- In 1938 it became the official journal of the young Institute of Mathematical Statistics, which assumed the responsibility for it, and Carver turned the editorship over to Samuel S Wilks.
- Carver himself published two papers in the first volume of the Annals, namely A mathematical theory of seasonals (1930) and Fundamentals of the theory of sampling (1930).
- When Carver founded the journal in 1930 he had financial support from the American Statistical Association.
- But Carver, who was the editor, was not going to see his journal die for lack of funding, so, from January 1934 he kept the Annals running at his own expense and without support from any institution.
- In October of 1934 Carver went back to the American Statistical Association suggesting that they might set up a group within the organisation consisting of mathematical statisticians who would then provide a base for the Annals.
- Carver decided that if the American Statistical Association would not play ball, then he would approach fellow mathematical statisticians to see if they would support setting up their own association.
- The Annals, still being run entirely by Carver, became their official journal.
- Only in 1938 did the Institute of Mathematical Statistics fully take over running and financing the Annals and, at this time, Samuel Wilks took over as editor from Carver.
- Carver spent the year 1934-35 as a Visiting Professor at UCLA.
- Ruth Jane Carver had been awarded a B.A. by the University of Michigan in 1939.
- However, Carver had another passion which began with a love of cars and motorcycles when he was at high school.
- Looking for even more excitement than fast cars led Carver to take up flying.
- Such instruction was aimed at men half his age but, given Carver's experience and skills, he was given permission by the Secretary of War to take the course.
- After setting up this course, Carver went to England as an Operations Analyst with the Eighth Air Force.
- Although Carver's work was solving these problems using what today would be called Operations Research, he did not spend all his time working at his desk but flew over France, studying from the air, and later from the ground, the effects of heavy bombing operations by the Germans.
- In 1961 Carver also retired from his professorship at the University of Michigan, the university he had been associated with for fifty-two years.
- There is one final story that we should tell since it says much about Carver.
- From the events of Carver's life that we have recounted above, the reader will have gained a fairly good idea as to his personality.
Born 4 December 1890, Waterbury, Connecticut, USA. Died 30 January 1977, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
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Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
