David Blackwell.

American mathematician. David Blackwell David Harold Blackwell was born on April 24, 1919, in Centralia, Illinois. He was the eldest of Grover and Mabel Johnson Blackwell’s four children. Blackwell’s father worked as a hostler for the Illinois Central Railroad, and his mother was a housewife. Although neither parent had completed high school, Blackwell’s paternal grandfather had been a teacher and owned an extensive library, which included the first algebra book Blackwell ever encountered. As a child, Blackwell also spent time in his uncle’s grocery store, where he learned to read by studying the words on seed packages.