Patrick Billingsley

Patrick Paul Billingsley (May 3, 1925 – April 22, 2011) was an American mathematician and stage and screen actor, noted for his books in advanced probability theory and statistics. He was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Billingsley in 1961

After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton University in 1955, he became a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Chicago, where he served as department chair from 1980 to 1983 and retired in 1994. In 1983 he was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He was given the Lester R. Ford Award for his article "Prime Numbers and Brownian Motion." He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.

He starred in a number of plays at Court Theatre and Body Politic Theatre in Chicago and appeared in at least nine movies. In 1978 he told Chicago Tribune Magazine: "As a teacher you're used to being on stage."

Death

He died in 2011, aged 85, in his Hyde Park, Chicago home. He was survived by his children, Franny, Patty, Julie, Marty and Paul, and his companion, Florence Weisblatt. His wife of nearly 50 years, social activist Ruth Billingsley, died in 2000.

Stage plays

• We Bombed in New Haven (1970)
• The Tempest (1977)
• Equus (1980)
• The Birthday Party (1978 and 1985)

Films

• The Fury (1978)
• My Bodyguard (1980)
• Somewhere in Time (1980)
• The Untouchables (1987)
• The Last Leaf – A Parable of Easter (1983)

Books

• Statistical Inference for Markov Processes (1961)
• Ergodic Theory and Information (1965)
• Convergence of Probability Measures (1968)
• Probability and Measure (3rd Edition, 1995 )

• The Elements of Statistical Inference

External links

• Obituary in the Chicago Tribune
• Patrick Billingsley, probability theorist and actor, 1925–2011