David Blackwell: Where Outcomes Are Uncertain, Sharpen the Decision

David Blackwell was born in Centralia, Illinois, the son of a railroad worker, and entered the University of Illinois at just sixteen. He earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees there by age twenty-two, then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Despite that early brilliance, the racial barriers of the era meant he could only find teaching positions at historically Black colleges before eventually joining Howard University's mathematics department, which he later led. In 1954, he joined the faculty at UC Berkeley, becoming the university's first Black tenured professor. In 1965, he was named the first African American member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

What he left behind

• Made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and Bayesian statistics
• Became Berkeley's first African American tenured professor, in 1954
• Named the first African American member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, in 1965
• Applied game theory to military strategy problems as a consultant at the RAND Corporation

Blackwell's career unfolded against a mathematics profession that offered Black scholars few institutional footholds; his appointments to Berkeley and the National Academy of Sciences marked barriers broken, not simply honors earned.

"Where outcomes are uncertain, sharpen the decision."

About this set

Blackwell's card is one of six in Set 1B — The Patternmakers, part of the Continuum: Builders, Thinkers & Strategists digital postcard collection. The Patternmakers gathers scholars and scientists who broke into fields that were never built with them in mind.

Shop The Patternmakers set or get the Complete Collection (all 12 cards).