David Harold Blackwell (1919 – 2010)

David Harold Blackwell (1919 – 2010) was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and Bayesian statistics. He taught at Howard from 1944 to 1954 and chaired the Howard math department during the later part of that period.

He was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, the first black tenured faculty member at UC Berkeley, and the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics.

He was also posthumously awarded the National Medal of Science in 2012.