abstract:In probability theory, the theory of large deviations concerns the asymptotic behaviour of remote tails of sequences of probability distributions. Some basic ideas of the theory can be traced back to Laplace and Cramér, but a clear and unified formal definition was only introduced in 1966, in a paper by Varadhan.
Varadhan, New York University, for his work in probability theory, especially his work on largedeviations from expected random behavior which has revolutionized this field of study during the second half of the 20th century, and become a cornerstone of both pure and applied probability.