Editing Thomas Bayes (section)

== Biography ==
[[File:Former Presbyterian Meeting House, Little Mount Sion, Tunbridge Wells.JPG|thumb|200px|Mount Sion Chapel, where Bayes served as minister.]]
Thomas Bayes was the son of London Presbyterian minister [[Joshua Bayes]],<ref>{{DNB Cite|wstitle=Bayes, Joshua}}</ref> and was possibly born in [[Hertfordshire]].<ref>''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', article on Bayes by A. W. F. Edwards.</ref> He came from a prominent [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|nonconformist]] 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 chapel in London before moving to [[Royal Tunbridge Wells|Tunbridge Wells]], Kent, around 1734. There he was minister of the Mount Sion Chapel, until 1752.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/bayesbiog.pdf|title = The Reverend Thomas Bayes FRS – A Biography|publisher= Institute of Mathematical Statistics|access-date=18 July 2010}}</ref>

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

#''Divine Benevolence, or an Attempt to Prove That the Principal End of the Divine Providence and Government is the Happiness of His Creatures'' (1731)
#''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 by [[George Berkeley]], a bishop and noted philosopher, the author of ''[[The Analyst]]''

Bayes was elected as a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]] in 1742. His nomination letter was signed by [[Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl Stanhope|Philip Stanhope]], [[Martin Folkes]], [[James Burrow]], [[Cromwell Mortimer]], and [[John Eames]]. It is speculated that he was accepted by the society on the strength of the ''Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions'', as he is not known to have published any other mathematical work during his lifetime.<ref>{{cite web|title=Lists of Royal Society Fellows 1660–2007|url=http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/fellowship/Fellows1660-2007.pdf|access-date=19 March 2011|publisher=The Royal Society|location=London}}</ref>

In his later years he took a deep interest in probability. Historian [[Stephen Stigler]] thinks that Bayes became interested in the subject while reviewing a work written in 1755 by [[Thomas Simpson]],<ref name="stigler86history">{{cite book|author = Stigler, S. M.|year = 1986|title = The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900.|publisher = [[Harvard University Press]]|isbn = 0-674-40340-1|url-access = registration|url = https://archive.org/details/historyofstatist00stig}}</ref> but [[George Alfred Barnard]] thinks he learned mathematics and probability from a book by [[Abraham de Moivre]].<ref>{{cite journal|author=Barnard, G. A.|title=Thomas Bayes—a biographical note|journal=Biometrika|year=1958|volume=45| pages=293–295|doi=10.2307/2333180|jstor=2333180}}</ref> Others speculate he was motivated to rebut [[David Hume]]'s argument against believing in miracles on the evidence of testimony in ''[[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]''.<ref>{{cite news |last=Cepelewicz|first=Jordana|title=How a Defense of Christianity Revolutionized Brain Science|url=http://nautil.us/blog/how-a-defense-of-christianity-revolutionized-brain-science|access-date=20 December 2016|work=[[Nautilus (science magazine)]]|date=20 December 2016}}</ref> His work and findings on probability theory were passed in manuscript form to his friend [[Richard Price]] after his death.

[[File:Bayes-Cotton Tomb at Bunhill Fields - geograph.org.uk - 702746.jpg|thumb|right|Monument to members of the Bayes and Cotton families, including Thomas Bayes and his father Joshua, in [[Bunhill Fields]] burial ground]]
By 1755, he was ill, and by 1761, he had died in Tunbridge Wells. He was buried in [[Bunhill Fields]] burial ground in Moorgate, London, where many [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|nonconformist]]s lie.

In 2018, the [[University of Edinburgh]] opened a £45 million research centre connected to its informatics department named after its alumnus, Bayes.<ref name=":0" /> 

In April 2021, it was announced that [[Cass Business School]], whose [[City of London]] campus is on [[Bunhill Row]], was to be renamed after Bayes.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|title=Cass Business School to be renamed after statistician Thomas Bayes|url=https://www.ft.com/content/0dd561d4-f841-41b8-ac63-529d48ddd1d2 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/https://www.ft.com/content/0dd561d4-f841-41b8-ac63-529d48ddd1d2 |archive-date=10 December 2022 |url-access=subscription|url-status=live|newspaper=Financial Times|date=21 April 2021 }}</ref>