mathematics

Thomas M. Liggett

Thomas M. Liggett is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Thomas M. Liggett rather than just read about it. In short: Thomas Milton Liggett (March 29, 1944 – May 12, 2020) was a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked in probability theory, specializing in interacting particle systems.

Key takeaways

Thomas M. Liggett belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Thomas M. Liggett to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Thomas M. Liggett from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Thomas Milton Liggett (March 29, 1944 – May 12, 2020) was a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked in probability theory, specializing in interacting particle systems.

Early life Thomas Milton Liggett was born on March 29, 1944, in Danville, Kentucky. Liggett moved at the age of two with his missionary parents to Latin America, where he was educated in Bueno Aires, Argentina and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965, where he was influenced towards probability by Samuel Goldberg (b. 1925), an ex-student of William Feller. He moved to Stanford, taking classes with Kai Lai Chung, and writing his thesis, Weak Convergence of Conditioned Sums of Independent Random Vectors, in 1969 with advisor Samuel Karlin on problems associated with the invariance principle. He graduated with a Master of Science in 1966 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1969.

Career Liggett joined the faculty at UCLA in 1969, where he spent his entire career. He became a professor in the mathematics department in 1976, and served as department chair from 1991 to 1994. He retired in 2011, but remained active within the department. He was the advisor of Norman Matloff and Amber L. Puha. Liggett had contributed to numerous areas of probability theory, including subadditive ergodic theory, random graphs, renewal theory, and was best known for his pioneering work on interacting particle systems, including the contact process, the voter model, and the exclusion process. His two books in this field have been influential. Liggett was the managing editor of the Annals of Probability from 1985–1987. He held a Sloan Research Fellowship from 1973–1977, and a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1997–1998. He was the Wald Memorial Lecturer of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1996, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. He had been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2012, and in 2012 he also became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Personal life Liggett married Christina Marie Goodale on August 19, 1972. They had two children, Timothy and Amy. Liggett died on May 12, 2020, in Los Angeles.

Notes

External links Thomas M. Liggett at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Thomas M. Liggett

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Thomas M. Liggett claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Thomas M. Liggett before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Thomas M. Liggett ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Thomas M. Liggett

In research: Thomas M. Liggett appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Thomas M. Liggett in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Thomas M. Liggett is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1944 births, 2020 deaths, 20th-century American mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Thomas M. Liggett outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Thomas M. Liggett” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Thomas M. Liggett in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Thomas M. Liggett means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Thomas M. Liggett out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Thomas M. Liggett in simple terms?

Why does Thomas M. Liggett matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Thomas M. Liggett?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Thomas M. Liggett.