Thomas Bayes - Biography

Biography

Thomas Bayes was the son of London Presbyterian minister Joshua Bayes and was possibly born in Hertfordshire. He came from a prominent non conformist 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 non-conformist chapel in London before moving to Tunbridge Wells, Kent around 1734. There he became minister of the Mount Sion chapel, until 1752.

He is known to have published two works in his lifetime, one theological and one mathematical:

1. Divine Benevolence, or an Attempt to Prove That the Principal End of the Divine Providence and Government is the Happiness of His Creatures (1731)
2. 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 of George Berkeley, author of The Analyst

It is speculated that Bayes was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1742 on the strength of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions, as he is not known to have published any other mathematical works during his lifetime.

In his later years he took a deep interest in probability. Stephen Stigler feels that he 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 de Moivre. His work and findings on probability theory were passed in manuscript form to his friend Richard Price after his death.

By 1755 he was ill and in 1761 had died in Tunbridge. He was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery in Moorgate, London where many Nonconformists lie.