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Concept
Thomas Bayes
Summary
Thomas Bayes (beɪz ; 1701 7 April 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem. Bayes never published what would become his most famous accomplishment; his notes were edited and published posthumously by Richard Price.
Thomas Bayes was the son of London Presbyterian minister Joshua Bayes, and was possibly born in Hertfordshire. He came from a prominent nonconformist family from Sheffield. In 1719, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study logic and theology. On his return around 1722, he assisted his father at the latter's chapel in London before moving to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, around 1734. There he was minister of the Mount Sion Chapel, until 1752.
He is known to have published two works in his lifetime, one theological and one mathematical:
Divine Benevolence, or an Attempt to Prove That the Principal End of the Divine Providence and Government is the Happiness of His Creatures (1731)
An Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions, and a Defence of the Mathematicians Against the Objections of the Author of The Analyst (published anonymously in 1736), in which he defended the logical foundation of Isaac Newton's calculus ("fluxions") against the criticism by George Berkeley, a bishop and noted philosopher, the author of The Analyst
Bayes was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1742. His nomination letter was signed by Philip Stanhope, Martin Folkes, James Burrow, Cromwell Mortimer, and John Eames. It is speculated that he was accepted by the society on the strength of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions, as he is not known to have published any other mathematical work during his lifetime.
In his later years he took a deep interest in probability. Historian Stephen Stigler thinks that Bayes became interested in the subject while reviewing a work written in 1755 by Thomas Simpson, but George Alfred Barnard thinks he learned mathematics and probability from a book by Abraham de Moivre.
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