Erling Sverdrup
Erling Sverdrup (23 February 1917 – 15 March 1994) was a Norwegian statistician and actuarial mathematician who helped build modern mathematical statistics and actuarial science in Norway. He worked mainly at the University of Oslo’s Department of Mathematics and through his links with Statistics Norway.
In World War II he worked in cryptography, helped recruit other mathematicians for the Norwegian cryptography effort, and spent part of the war in London. He completed his actuarial exams in autumn 1945. In 1948 he became a scientific assistant at the Insurance Mathematical Seminar at the University of Oslo, where actuarial education was organized. He then spent several years in the United States on fellowships and earned his PhD in 1952.
In 1953 he was made a professor of insurance mathematics and mathematical statistics at the University of Oslo, a position he held until retirement. He was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1954. He was also honoured as a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1969 and made an honorary member of the Norwegian Statistical Association and the Norwegian Association of Actuaries for his work in strengthening actuarial education in Norway.
The Sverdrup Prize was created in 2007 by the Norwegian Statistical Association. It awards two prizes every two years: one to a leading statistician and one to a younger researcher who has published a high-quality journal article. The first four senior prize winners were Dag Tjøstheim (2009), Tore Schweder (2011), Nils Lid Hjort (2013) and Odd Aalen (2015).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:57 (CET).