Walter Laws Smith (November 12, 1926 – March 6, 2023) was a British-born American mathematician, known for his contributions to applied probability theory.

Biography

Smith was born in London on November 12, 1926. Smith received a B.A. in mathematics (1947) from Cambridge University, having gained First Class in the Mathematical Tripos Part 1 and Part 2. He then received an M.A. (1951) and Ph.D (1953) from Cambridge. His dissertation was entitled Stochastic Sequences of Events advised by Henry Daniels and D. R. Cox, with whom he published the book Queues (1961) and also published with in his early years. He became a professor of statistics at The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (1954–56 and 1958–), and he was an emeritus professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research. Smith was a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a fellow of the American Statistical Association (1966), a winner of the Adams Prize at the University of Cambridge (1960), a Sir Winston Churchill overseas fellow and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (see List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1974) Smith died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on March 6, 2023, at the age of 96.

Publications