Primary
Thomas Bayes ○̉｜Definition｜1st｜20260506164128-00-⌔
Thomas Bayes
Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/BAYZ; c. 1701 – 7 April 1761[^2]12) 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.3
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ᯤ)
Link to original Footnotes
Belhouse, D.R. The Reverend Thomas Bayes FRS: a Biography to Celebrate the Tercentenary of his Birth Archived 5 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. ↩
Bayes’s tombstone says he died at 59 years of age on 7 April 1761, so he was born in either 1701 or 1702. Some sources erroneously write the death date as 17 April, but these sources all seem to stem from a clerical error duplicated; no evidence argues in favour of a 17 April death date. Bayes’s birth date is unknown, likely due to the fact he was baptised in a Dissenting church, which either did not keep or was unable to preserve its baptismal records; accord Royal Society Library and Archive catalogue, Thomas Bayes (1701–1761) ↩
McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. (2011). The Theory That Would Not Die * p. 10.*, p. 10, at Google Books ↩
Secondary
• • •