Abraham Wald (/wɔːld/; Hungarian: Wald Ábrahám, Yiddish: אברהם וואַלד; (1902-10-31)31 October 1902 – (1950-12-13)13 December 1950) was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician who contributed to decision theory,[1] geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis.

[2] One of his well-known statistical works was written during World War II on how to minimize the damage to bomber aircraft and took into account the survivorship bias in his calculations.

[6] One of the problems that the SRG worked on was to examine the distribution of damage to aircraft returning after flying missions to provide advice on how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire.

Wald and his wife died in 1950 when the Air India plane (VT-CFK, a DC-3 aircraft[8]) in which they were travelling crashed near the Rangaswamy Pillar in the northern part of the Nilgiri Mountains, in southern India, on an extensive lecture tour at the invitation of the Indian government.

Fisher attacked Wald for being a mathematician without scientific experience who had written an incompetent book on statistics.

[11] Lucien Le Cam credits him in his own book, Asymptotic Methods in Statistical Decision Theory: "The ideas and techniques used reflect first and foremost the influence of Abraham Wald's writings.