lew@ihuxr.UUCP (08/25/83)
..., English mathematician, author of the first expression in precise, quantitative form of a mode of inductive inference, was born in 1702. He was the eldest son of Ann Bayes and Joshua Bayes, a fellow of the Royal Society and one of the first six Nonconformist ministers to be publicly ordained in England. Educated privately, he was ordained and began his ministry by helping his father, the minister of the Presbyterian meetinghouse in Leather Lane, near Holborn, London. Between 1720 and 1731 Bayes went to minister at the Presbyterian chapel in Tunbridge Wells, where he remained till his death on April17, 1761, having retired from the ministry in 1752. In 1731 he published a tract entitled "Divine Benevloence, or an attempt to prove that the Principle End of the Divine Providence and Government is the Happiness of His Creatures", and in 1736 another, entitled "An Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions and a Defence of the Mathematicians against the objections of the Author of the Analyst." He was elected to fellowship of the Royal society in 1742. Bayes' main works, the paper which contains the theorem which bears his name and a paper on asymptotic series, were published posthumously in the "Philosophical Transactions" by his friend the Rev. Richard Price. - Encyclopedia Britannica