Jacob Wolfowitz was a Polish-born American Jewish mathematician, statistician, and information theorist, best known for his pioneering work in decision theory, sequential analysis, and statistics. Born on March 19, 1910, in Warsaw, Congress Poland (now Poland), he immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1920 at the age of ten, settling in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in a Jewish family during challenging times, including the Great Depression, Wolfowitz attended public schools in Brooklyn and pursued higher education at the College of the City of New York, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1931. He began his professional career as a high school mathematics teacher in the mid-1930s while studying part-time as a graduate student at New York University, where he earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1942 under the guidance of Abraham Wald. This collaboration with Wald proved fruitful, leading to numerous joint publications that advanced statistical theory during and after World War II. Following his doctorate, Wolfowitz's academic career took off with his first appointment as an associate professor at the University of North Carolina. He later joined Cornell University, where he spent much of his career as a professor of mathematics and statistics, contributing significantly to fields like information theory—for which he received the prestigious Claude E. Shannon Award—and early computer science concepts. His work on optimal sequential probability ratio tests and decision procedures under uncertainty remains influential. Wolfowitz was also the father of Paul Wolfowitz, who rose to prominence as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and President of the World Bank Group. Jacob Wolfowitz passed away on July 16, 1981, in Ithaca, New York, leaving a legacy as a key figure in 20th-century American mathematics and statistics.