Editing Herbert Robbins (section)

{{short description|American mathematician}}
{{more footnotes|date=May 2022}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Herbert Ellis Robbins
| image             = 1966-HerbertRobbins.jpg
| image_size        = 250px
| alt               = 
| caption           = Herbert Robbins visiting Purdue in 1966
| birth_date        = {{Birth date|1915|1|12}}
| birth_place       = [[New Castle, Pennsylvania|New Castle]], Pennsylvania, US
| death_date        = {{Death date and age|2001|2|12|1915|1|12}}
| death_place       = [[Princeton, New Jersey|Princeton]], New Jersey, US
| fields            = 
| workplaces        = {{ublist|[[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|University of North Carolina]]|[[Columbia University]]|[[Rutgers University]]}}
| alma_mater        = [[Harvard University]]
| doctoral_advisor  = [[Hassler Whitney]]
| doctoral_students = {{ublist|[[Raghu Raj Bahadur]]|[[Cyrus Derman]]|[[David Siegmund]]|[[Herbert Wilf]]|[[Gopinath Kallianpur]]}}
| thesis_title      = On the Classification of the Maps of a 2-Complex into a Space
| thesis_year       = 1938
| thesis_url        = https://www.jstor.org/stable/1990025
| notable_students  = 
| known_for         = 
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| author_abbrev_zoo = 
| influences        = 
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| awards            = 
| signature         = <!--(filename only)-->
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}}
'''Herbert Ellis Robbins''' (January 12, 1915 – February 12, 2001) was an American  [[mathematician]] and [[statistician]]. He did research in [[topology]], [[measure theory]], [[statistics]], and a variety of other fields.  
 
He was the co-author, with [[Richard Courant]], of ''[[What is Mathematics?]]''.  The [[Robbins lemma]], used in [[empirical Bayes method]]s, is named after him.  [[Robbins algebra]]s are named after him because of a conjecture (since proved) that he posed concerning [[Boolean algebra (structure)|Boolean algebras]]. The [[Robbins' theorem]], in [[graph theory]], is also named after him, as is the [[Ear decomposition|Whitney–Robbins synthesis]], a tool he introduced to prove this theorem. The well-known unsolved problem of minimizing in sequential selection the expected rank of the selected item under full information, sometimes referred to as the fourth [[secretary problem]], also bears his name: [[Robbins' problem (of optimal stopping)]].