Erling Sverdrup (23 February 1917 – 15 March 1994) was a Norwegian statistician and actuarial mathematician.
He played an instrumental role in building up and modernising the fields of mathematical statistics and actuarial science in Norway, primarily at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oslo but also via his links to Statistics Norway.
During the second world war Sverdrup was involved with the cryptography part of the war efforts, specifically also with organising and recruiting other mathematicians to the Norwegian cryptography branch, spending part of this time in London.
He then became scientific assistant at the Insurance Mathematical Seminar at the University Oslo in 1948, where the education of actuaries was organised, after which he spent stipend years in the USA and completed his PhD there in 1952.
The four first recipients of the senior Sverdrup Prize have been Dag Tjøstheim (2009), Tore Schweder (2011), Nils Lid Hjort (2013) and Odd Aalen (2015).