External links
- A path through probability in honour of F.Thomas BRUSS at Département de Mathématique of the Université libre de Bruxelles
- FT Bruss Webpage on the Université libre de Bruxelles platform
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F. Thomas Bruss | |
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| Born | 27 September 1949 Kleinblittersdorf (Saarland), Germany |
| Alma mater | Saarland University Cambridge University University of Sheffield |
| Known for | Odds algorithm of optimal stopping Bruss–Duerinckx theorem BRS-inequality |
| Awards | Order of Leopold (Belgium) (2011) Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow Institute of Mathematical Statistics fellow elected member of the Tönissteiner Kreis e.V. Jacques Deruyts Prize (period 2000–2004) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Namur University University of California at Santa Barbara University of Arizona at Tucson University of California at Los Angeles Vesalius College Vrije Universiteit Brussel. |
| Thesis | Hinreichende Kriterien für das Aussterben von modifizierten Verzweigungsprozessen (1977) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gerd Schmidt [1] |
| Doctoral students | Yves-Caoimhin Swan, Rémi Dendievel [1] |
Franz Thomas Bruss (born 27 September 1949 in Kleinblittersdorf (Saarland)) [2] is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he had been director of "Mathématiques Générales" and co-director of the probability chair, and where he continues his research as invited professor.
Thomas Bruss studied mathematics at the Universities Saarbrücken, Cambridge and Sheffield. In 1977 he obtained the Dr. rer. nat at Saarbrücken with his thesis Hinreichende Kriterien für das Aussterben von modifizierten Verzweigungsprozessen (Sufficient Conditions for the Extinction of Modified Branching Processes) under Professor Gerd Schmidt, and the legal Dr. en sciences of Belgium one year later. [1]
After a scientific career at the University of Namur he moved to the United States and taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Arizona, Tucson, and then University of California at Los Angeles. In 1990 he returned to Europe as professor of mathematics at Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 1993 he was appointed chair of Mathématiques Générales and Probability at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he has stayed since then. He held visiting positions at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, University of Zaire, University of Antwerp, Purdue University, and repeatedly at the Université Catholique de Louvain.
Bruss is fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, elected member of the Tönissteiner Kreis e.V., Germany, and member of the International Statistical Institute. In 2004 he received the Jacques Deruyts Prize (period 2000–2004) for distinguished contributions to mathematics from the Belgian Academy of Science Académie Royale de Belgique.
In 2011, Thomas Bruss was honoured Commandeur de Order of Leopold of Belgium.
Under his presidency (2017–2019) the Belgian Statistical Society has received royal favour and become the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium (French : Société Royale Belge de Statistique – Dutch : Koninklijke Belgische Vereniging voor Statistiek) [3]
His main research activities and achievements in mathematics are in the field of probability. He published 64 research papers [4] [5] concerning:
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Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev was a Russian mathematician and considered to be the founding father of Russian mathematics.
Herbert Ellis Robbins was an American mathematician and statistician. He did research in topology, measure theory, statistics, and a variety of other fields.
The secretary problem demonstrates a scenario involving optimal stopping theory that is studied extensively in the fields of applied probability, statistics, and decision theory. It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem. Its solution is also known as the 37% rule.
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Bruss may refer to:
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In probability theory, Robbins' problem of optimal stopping, named after Herbert Robbins, is sometimes referred to as the fourth secretary problem or the problem of minimizing the expected rank with full information.
Let X1, ..., Xn be independent, identically distributed random variables, uniform on [0, 1]. We observe the Xk's sequentially and must stop on exactly one of them. No recall of preceding observations is permitted. What stopping rule minimizes the expected rank of the selected observation, and what is its corresponding value?
In decision theory, the odds algorithm is a mathematical method for computing optimal strategies for a class of problems that belong to the domain of optimal stopping problems. Their solution follows from the odds strategy, and the importance of the odds strategy lies in its optimality, as explained below.
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Stefan Langerman false Swarzberg is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician whose research topics include computational geometry, data structures, and recreational mathematics. He is professor and co-head of the algorithms research group at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) with Jean Cardinal. He is a director of research for the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS–FNRS).
Pierre Bieliavsky, is a Belgian mathematician.
Jacques Jean-Pierre Neveu was a Belgian mathematician, specializing in probability theory. He is one of the founders of the French school of probability and statistics.
Laurence Broze is a Belgian applied mathematician specializing in statistics and econometrics and particularly in the theory of rational expectations. She is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Lille in France. From 2012 to 2018 she was president of l'association femmes et mathématiques, a French association for women in mathematics.
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Dimitri Leemans is a Belgian mathematician born in Uccle in 1972.
Thomas Shelburne Ferguson is an American mathematician and statistician. He is a professor emeritus of mathematics and statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Stephen Mitchell Samuels was a statistician and mathematician, known for his work on the secretary problem and for the Samuels Conjecture involving a Chebyshev-type inequality for sums of independent, non-negative random variables.
In the theory of online algorithms and optimal stopping, a prophet inequality is a bound on the expected value of a decision-making process that handles a sequence of random inputs from known probability distributions, relative to the expected value that could be achieved by a "prophet" who knows all the inputs ahead of time. These inequalities have applications in the theory of algorithmic mechanism design and mathematical finance.
Albert Goldbeter is a Belgian theoretical biologist who is professor emeritus in the Faculty of Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.
