Editing Extreme value theory (section)

==History==
The field of extreme value theory was pioneered by [[Leonard Tippett|L. Tippett]] (1902–1985). Tippett was employed by the [[British Cotton Industry Research Association]], where he worked to make cotton thread stronger. In his studies, he realized that the strength of a thread was controlled by the strength of its weakest fibres. With the help of [[Ronald Fisher|R.A. Fisher]], Tippet obtained three asymptotic limits describing the distributions of extremes assuming independent variables. [[Emil Julius Gumbel|E.J. Gumbel]] (1958)<ref>{{harvp|Gumbel|2004}}</ref> codified this theory. These results can be extended to allow for slight correlations between variables, but the classical theory does not extend to strong correlations of the order of the variance. One universality class of particular interest is that of ''log-correlated'' fields, where the correlations decay logarithmically with the distance.