Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
Without Kolmogorov, we might have lost World War II to the Japanese: “In the 1940's, he created a powerful technique for using probability to make predictions in the face of randomness, on the basis of a series of observations. The technique was applied to a wide range of systems, such as the problem of landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier bobbing in the sea, calculating ahead of time what its likely position would be.” From his obituary in the NY Times, linked above.
The New York Times link above is now behind a pay wall, but here is a short biography of Kolmogorov. Here is a photo of him:
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This page most recently revised on 28-Nov-2021.