J. Laurie Snell

James Laurie Snell (January 15, 1925 in Wheaton, Illinois – March 19, 2011 in Hanover, New Hampshire) was an American mathematician and educator.

Lucille taught the three sons (Jud, John and Laurie) to play piano, cello, and violin.

[a] Doob assigned such topics by having students attempt to solve a series of problems that he kept on file cards.

He worked with John G. Kemeny and Gerald L. Thompson to write Introduction to Finite Mathematics (1957) which described probability theory, linear algebra, and applications in sociology, genetics, psychology, anthropology, and economics.

In 1962 the publisher Prentice-Hall issued a third book from a Dartmouth team: Kemeny, Snell, Thompson, and Arthur Schleifer Jr. wrote Finite Mathematics with Business Applications which included applications: computer circuits, critical path analysis, flow diagrams for computing and accounting procedures, Monte Carlo simulation of decision processes, reliability, decision theory, waiting line theory, a simple approach to mathematics of finance, matrix games, and the simplex method for solving linear programming problems.

The Snell envelope, used in stochastics and mathematical finance, is the smallest supermartingale dominating the price process.