Ted Hill (mathematician)

Theodore Preston Hill (born December 28, 1943) is an American mathematician specializing in probability theory. He is a professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a researcher at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Ted Hill
Born
Theodore Preston Hill

(1943-12-28) December 28, 1943
Flatbush, New York, United States
NationalityAmerican
Alma materB.S., United States Military Academy, 1966

M.S., Stanford University, 1968

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1977
Known forProbability Theory: Benford's Law, Fair division, Optimal Stopping
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsGeorgia Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorLester Dubins

Contributions

Hill is known for his research on mathematical probability theory, in particular for his work on Benford's law,[1] and for his work in the theories of optimal stopping (secretary problems) and fair division, in particular the Hill-Beck land division problem.

Hill has attracted attention for a paper on the theory that men exhibit greater variability than women in genetically controlled traits that he wrote with Sergei Tabachnikov.[2] It was accepted but not published by The Mathematical Intelligencer; a later version authored by Hill alone was peer reviewed and accepted by The New York Journal of Mathematics (NYJM) and retracted after publication. A revised version, again authored by Hill alone, was subsequently peer reviewed again and published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics.[3][4]

Education and career

Born in Flatbush, New York, he studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point (Distinguished Graduate of the Class of 1966), and Stanford University (M.S. in Operations Research). After graduating from the U.S. Army Ranger School and serving as an Army Captain in the Combat Engineers of the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam, he returned to study mathematics at the University of Göttingen (Fulbright Scholar), the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D. under advisor Lester Dubins), and as NATO/NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Leiden University.

He spent most of his career as a professor in the School of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with temporary appointments at Washington University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Göttingen (Fulbright Professor), the University of Costa Rica, the Free University of Amsterdam, the Mexican Centre for Mathematical Research (CIMAT), and as Gauss Professor in the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He is currently professor emeritus of mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Research Scholar in Residence at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Selected publications
  • Theodore P. Hill (1995). "A Statistical Derivation of the Significant-Digit Law" (PDF). Statistical Science. 10 (4): 354–363. doi:10.1214/ss/1177009869. MR 1421567.
  • Theodore P. Hill (July–August 1998). "The First Digit Phenomenon" (PDF). American Scientist. 86 (4): 358+. Bibcode:1998AmSci..86..358H. doi:10.1511/1998.4.358.
  • Theodore P. Hill (July–August 2000). "Mathematical Devices for Getting a Fair Share" (PDF). American Scientist. 88 (4): 325+. Bibcode:2000AmSci..88..325H. doi:10.1511/2000.4.325.
  • Theodore P. Hill (March–April 2009). "Knowing When to Stop". American Scientist. 97 (2): 126+. doi:10.1511/2009.77.126.
  • Arno Berger & Theodore P. Hill (2015). An Introduction to Benford's Law. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16306-2.
  • Theodore P. Hill (2017). Pushing Limits: From West Point to Berkeley and Beyond. American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 978-1-4704-3584-4.
  • Theodore P. Hill (2018). "Slicing Sandwiches, States, and Solar Systems". American Scientist. 106 (1): 42–49. doi:10.1511/2018.106.1.42.
  • Theodore P. Hill (2020). Pushing Limits: Memoir of a Maverick from Soldier to Scholar. Wise Ink Creative Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63489-351-0.

References
  1. Brase, Charles Henry; Brase, Corrinne Pellillo (2014-01-01). Understandable Statistics. Cengage Learning. pp. 436–. ISBN 9781305142909. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
  2. Azvolinsky, Anna (2018-09-27). "A Retracted Paper on Sex Differences Ignites Debate". The Scientist. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
  3. Hill, Theodore P. (2020-07-13). "Modeling the evolution of differences in variability between sexes". Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics. 23 (5): 1009–1031. doi:10.1080/09720502.2020.1769827. S2CID 221060074. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  4. "What really happened when two mathematicians tried to publish a paper on gender differences? The tale of the emails". Retraction Watch. September 17, 2018.
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