➰Black History is Infinity Every AI system that learns from its own decisions — every algorithm that adjusts, predicts, and optimizes in real time — rests on mathematical foundations formalized by a man who once had to write 105 letters to historically Black colleges because no white university in America would hire him. David Blackwell was born on April 24, 1919, in Centralia, Illinois, the son of a railroad worker. He entered the University of Illinois at 16 and, by age 22, had completed his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in mathematics — becoming only the seventh African American in U.S. history to earn a PhD in the field. His early work on Markov chains drew the attention of John von Neumann, who invited him to the Institute for Advanced Study. Princeton University, however, barred him from attending lectures because he was Black. In 1942, an academic offer from UC Berkeley was rescinded after internal objections. Blackwell spent the next twelve years teaching at Southern University, Clark College, and Howard University, where he became department chair. During this period, he conducted research at the RAND Corporation and co-authored *Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions* in 1954, one of the first rigorous integrations of game theory and statistical inference. That same year, Berkeley reversed course and offered him a professorship. Blackwell became the university’s first Black tenured professor and later chaired its Department of Statistics. His contributions reshaped modern mathematics. The Rao–Blackwell theorem transformed statistical estimation. His work in dynamic programming laid critical foundations for reinforcement learning. His advances in Bayesian decision theory and information theory underpin systems that power today’s artificial intelligence — from predictive models to autonomous technologies. In 1965, he became the first African American elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he was posthumously awarded the National Medal of Science. And in 2024, NVIDIA named its next-generation AI superchip platform “Blackwell” in recognition of his foundational contributions to the mathematics that make modern machine learning possible — a rare public acknowledgment that the AI revolution runs on theory he formalized decades ago. The architecture driving contemporary AI does not exist in isolation. It stands on principles Blackwell advanced when institutions benefiting from that mathematics refused him entry. He once said he was never interested in doing research, only in understanding. That pursuit reshaped statistics, economics, information theory, and machine intelligence. The systems shaping the future are learning from equations he proved. 📍 Follow along as we continue honoring the builders, the breakthroughs, and what comes next.