Irving John (Jack) Good

Irving John (Jack) Good was born 9 December 1916 in London, England. He was a Cryptologist, statistician, and early worker on Colossus at Bletchley Park and the University of Manchester Mark I. Major contributor, if not promulgator, of Bayesian Statistics.

Educ: Major Scholar of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1934; State Scholar, 1934; B.A., Cambridge, 1938, Ph.D., Cambridge (Mathematics), 1941, Supervisor: G. H. Hardy, F.R.S.; M.A., Cambridge, 1943; Sc.D., Cambridge, 1963; D.Sc., Oxford, 1964; Prof. Exp: Foreign Office, 1941-45; Worked at Bletchley Park, Government Code and Cypher School, on Ultra (both the Enigma and a Teleprinter encrypting machine) as the main statistician under A. M. Turing, F.R.S., C.H.O.D., Alexander (British Chess Champion), and M. H. A. Newman, F.R.S., in turn; Lecturer in Mathematics and Electronic Computing, Manchester University, 1945-48; Government Communications Headquarters, U.K., 1948-59; Visiting Research Associate Professor, Princeton, 1955 (Summer); Consultant to IBM for a few weeks, 1958/59 (Information retrieval and evaluation of the Perceptron.); Admiralty Research Laboratory, 1959-62; Consultant, Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analysis, 1962-64; Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Oxford, and Atlas Computer Laboratory, Science Research Council, Great Britain, 1964-67; Professor (Research) of Statistics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since July, 1967; University Distinguished Professor since 19 November 1969; Adjunct Professor of the Center for the Study of Science in Society from 1983 October 19; Adjunct Professor of Philosophy from 1984 April 6; Honors and Awards: Cambridgeshire Chess Champion, 1939; Smith's Prize, Cambridge (one or two Smith's Prizes are awarded each year for mathematical essays by graduate students), 1940; Supervisor: A. S. Besicovitch, F.R.S.; "Fellow" of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 1958; One of the original six people designated the title "University Professor", 1969; Title changed to "University Distinguished Professor", without change of meaning, in 1975; Horsley Prize (Virginia Academy of Science) (shared with R. A. Gaskins), 1972, for the best scientific paper presented that year at the annual meetings; Fellow of the American Statistical Association, 1973; Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1974; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1985 May 8; Honorary Member of the International Statistical Institute, 16 November 1990.

Good rediscovered irrational numbers and the infinity of solutions of 2x2 = y2+1 at the age of 9. He rediscovered mathematical induction and, in a sense, integration, at the age of 13. In 1943, Good was one of seven people who helped design Mark II of a large-scale (classified) binary electronic digital computer called Colossus (which was not entirely general purpose).

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