The founder of modern theoretical statistics, Jerzy Neyman was also an integral factor in the development of the statistical theory of hypothesis testing. His works has come to be widely applicable in the fields of medical diagnosis, astronomy, genetics, meteorology, and high-tech agriculture. Neyman is particularly remembered for combining a theory and its practical applications in his work, and for making advances in the statistical methods of confidence intervals and survey sampling.

Neyman was born Jerzy Splawa-Neyman on April 16, 1894 in Bendery, Moldavia (formerly Bessarabia, now Moldova), which then was part of Russia. He began classes at the Ukraine's Kharkov State University in 1912, ultimately receiving a master's degree from the school in 1916 for his work on Lebesgue integers. The following year, the Institute of Technology in Kharkov hired him as a lecturer.

Neyman worked at the Institute until 1921, when he accepted a post as statistician at the Institute of...