Edward Epstein (1931-2008) was an American meteorologist who pioneered the use of statistical methods in weather forecasting and the development of ensemble forecasting techniques.[1]
During the 1960s he was professor of meteorology at the University of Michigan. For the academic year 1968-9 he was at the University of Stockholm as a visiting scientist, and developed the application of ranked probability score that became the basis for forecast verification.[2]
In 1973 he joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, D.C. and in 1981 he was appointed director of its Climate and Earth Sciences Laboratory. In 1983 he joined the National Weather Service's National Meteorological Center as chief scientist of the Climate Analysis Center, and it was there that he published his influential meteorological monograph "Statistical Inference and Prediction in Climatology: A Bayesian Approach." [2]
In 1979 he contracted Parkinson's disease. Although it later became debilitating, he remained active for most of the period until his death on 14 October 2008, in Potomac, Maryland.[1]