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 Edwin Thompson Jaynes (1922-1998), photo taken circa 1960. | |
| Born | July 5, 1922 Waterloo, Iowa |
| Died | April 30, 1998 St. Louis, Missouri |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Known for | MaxEnt interpretation |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physicist |
| Institutions | Washington University |
| Doctoral advisor | Eugene Wigner |
Edwin Thompson Jaynes (Waterloo, Iowa, July 5, 1922 – St. Louis, Missouri, April 30, 1998) was Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He wrote extensively on statistical mechanics and on foundations of probability and statistical inference, initiating in 1957 the MaxEnt interpretation of thermodynamics, as being a particular application of more general Bayesian/information theory techniques (although he argued this was already implicit in the works of Gibbs). He was one of the first to interpret probability theory as an extension of Aristotelian logic.
In 1963, together with Fred Cummings, he modelized the evolution of a two-level atom in an electromagnetic field, in a fully quantized way. This model is known as the Jaynes-Cummings model.
A particular focus of his work was the construction of logical principles for assigning prior probability distributions; see the principle of maximum entropy, the principle of transformation groups and Laplace's principle of indifference.
His last book, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science gathers various threads of modern thinking about Bayesian probability and statistical inference, and contrasts the advantages of Bayesian techniques with the results of other approaches. It was published posthumously in 2003 by Cambridge University Press from an incomplete manuscript by editor Larry Bretthorst.
Notes
- E. T. Jaynes (1957) Information theory and statistical mechanics, Physical Review 106:620
- E. T. Jaynes (1957) Information theory and statistical mechanics II, Physical Review 108:171
- E. T. Jaynes (1968) Prior Probabilities, IEEE Trans. on Systems Science and Cybernetics SSC-4:227
- E. T. Jaynes (1973) The Well-Posed Problem, Found. Phys. 3:477
External links
- Edwin Thompson Jaynes. Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press, (2003). ISBN 0-521-59271-2.
- Early (1994) version (fragmentary) of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science.
- A comprehensive web page on E. T. Jaynes's life and work.
- ET Jaynes' obituary at Washington university