Biographical/Historical Information
Emil Julius Gumbel was born in Munich in 1891. He studied mathematics, economics, statistics, and physics at the universities of Munich and Berlin. After further studies at the University of Heidelberg, he completed his habilitation in statistics in 1923, and served there as a professor. Gumbel was highly active in pacifist and left-wing groups. He was dismissed by the University of Heidelberg in 1932 and emigrated to France. There, Gumbel taught at Paris and Lyon and was active in emigré politics. In 1940, he immigrated to the United States, where he taught at various institutions of higher learning in New York City including the New School and Columbia University. Gumbel was a prolific writer in two distinct areas: His political writings, particularly in the 1920s and early 1930s, focused on pacifism, renewed German militarism, and the so-called “Fememorde”, a series of political murders during the Weimar Republic. His hundreds of mathematical writings primarily concern statistics, particularly extreme values, and the predictability of extreme events. Emil Gumbel died in Brooklyn, NY in 1966.
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Citation
Statistician and professor Emil Gumbel, Leo Baeck Institute, F 2371A.