Jerzy Neyman was a Polish mathematician and statistician who spent the first part of his professional career at various institutions in Warsaw, Poland and then at University College London, and the second part at the University of California, Berkeley. Neyman was born on April 16, 1894, in Bendery, Russia. Neyman entered the University of Kharkov. Although he intended to study mathematics, he was temporarily drawn to physics by the groundbreaking work of Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. However, when Neyman was introduced to the advancements in calculus made by French mathematician Henri-Leon Lebesgue, he refocused his studies on mathematics and continued in the field for the remainder of his life. Although he did not meet Lebesgue until 1926, Neyman considered him his mentor. For his undergraduate thesis he submitted a paper entitled "Integral of Lebesgue," which was awarded a gold medal.

He also studied mathematics and probability under S. N. Berstein. Graduating in September 1917, Neyman enrolled in the graduate school in mathematics at the University of Kharkov and also became a lecturer in mathematics at the Kharkov Institute of Technology. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Science. He died on August 5, 1981 in Oakland, California, United States.