Peter Whittle

Peter Whittle (born 27 February 1927, in Wellington, New Zealand) is a mathematician and statistician, working in the fields of stochastic nets, optimal control, time series analysis, stochastic optimization and stochastic dynamics. From 1967 to 1994, he was the Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research at the University of Cambridge. Whittle graduated in 1948 with a M.Sc. from the University of New Zealand. He then moved to the... more

Peter Whittle (born 27 February 1927, in Wellington, New Zealand) is a mathematician and statistician, working in the fields of stochastic nets, optimal control, time series analysis, stochastic optimization and stochastic dynamics. From 1967 to 1994, he was the Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research at the University of Cambridge. Whittle graduated in 1948 with a M.Sc. from the University of New Zealand. He then moved to the University of Uppsala in 1950 to study for his Ph.D. with Herman Wold; his thesis, Hypothesis Testing in Time Series, was published by 1951. He remained in Uppsala until 1953 when, having met his wife Kathe, he moved back to New Zealand. He worked at the DSIR Applied Mathematics Laboratory (later the Applied Mathematics Division) until 1959 when he was appointed to a lectureship in Cambridge. This appointment was brief however; Whittle was appointed Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Manchester in 1961. After 6 years in... less