The 107th Birthday Push - Help Raise 107,000 by April 24

David H. Blackwell helped build the mathematics of decision making under uncertainty, ideas that now shape artificial intelligence, finance, risk analysis, and the systems increasingly guiding modern life. Yet his name is still missing from the broader public story of how the Information Age was built. This film is an effort to change that and to ensure that one of its foundational minds is no longer left out of the record.

Background

I am the proud granddaughter of Professor David H. Blackwell, one of the most influential mathematicians in American history and a pioneering architect of decision science whose work helped shape modern AI. While he made extraordinary contributions to mathematics and science, including becoming the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and independently developing dynamic programming, his name and story have largely been absent from the broader public understanding of how the modern technological world came to be.

This film is part of a larger effort to expand the origin story of the Information Age to include one of the minds who helped build its intellectual foundations.

Last year, NVIDIA named its flagship AI platform Blackwell in his honor. Yet most people still do not know who David H. Blackwell was, what he built, or how profoundly his ideas continue to shape the modern world.

To help ensure that this story becomes more widely known, I am producing GAME of GENiUS: David Blackwell. His Math. Our Future., a documentary about my grandfather. The project brings together, for the first time, the full scope of his life and work, revealing the historical, scientific, and human context behind the mathematics, the field of decision making under uncertainty, and the ideas that helped shape the Algorithmic Revolution and the Information Age.

Watch a short teaser about the film here.

The Urgency

When I began this film, I thought I was telling my grandfather’s story.

What became clear to me is that this project is larger than family memory. It is about expanding the origin story of the Information Age to include a foundational mind whose work helped shape it and bringing wider public attention to a discipline that remains essential to how we live, decide, and build.

Dr. David Harold Blackwell did not simply contribute to modern computing and artificial intelligence. He helped build the science of decision making, the mathematical frameworks that allow both people and technologies to reason under uncertainty. His ideas sit beneath the systems influencing financial markets, machine learning models, risk assessment, and the algorithms that increasingly structure public and private life.

And yet most people have never heard his name, and the canon of the geniuses who founded the Information Age still mistakenly excludes his contributions.

GAME of GENiUS is not simply a tribute. It is a careful and rigorous account of a life and body of work that belongs in the public understanding of how our technological world came to be.

It is also an invitation to consider what Blackwell’s life, mathematics, and philosophy might offer us now. In a moment marked by extraordinary progress, profound uncertainty, and renewed social strain, his work offers a way to think more clearly about decision making when the future cannot be fully known.

This is not only a cultural problem. It is a structural one, one that we can help rebuild.  

As knowledge systems increasingly draw from the historical record, incomplete histories risk becoming embedded in the informational layer that shapes future understanding and outcomes.

The foundations of that future are being laid now.

Including Blackwell in the story of modern innovation does more than correct the record. It brings forward a model of brilliance, clarity, and humane intelligence that the world still needs.

Help ensure that this chapter of the story helps shape the future we build next.

Your support helps bring this story to screen while key voices, archives, and historical context can still be gathered. Donate now to help complete this next phase of GAME of GENiUS.

Your Support

Your support builds on $175,000 already secured, from leading mathematics institutions and individuals who know Dr. Blackwell’s legacy must be told. Now as we approach his 107th birthday on April 24th, help us to raise an additional $107,000. 

Your donation will contribute directly to the production of the film, such as:

• Research + development, e.g. archival licensing 

• Crew + talent, e.g. interviews to capture aging collaborators, students, and family before their accounts are gone 

• Post-production, e.g. editing and sound mixing 

• Global distribution, e.g. film festival submissions and other marketing campaigns 

Your donation is tax-deductible! BAVC, a registered 501(c)3 is our fiscal sponsor, making all donations tax deductible to the full extent permitted by law.