473 research outputs found
A Conversation with Martin Bradbury Wilk
Martin Bradbury Wilk was born on December 18, 1922, in Montr\'{e}al,
Qu\'{e}bec, Canada. He completed a B.Eng. degree in Chemical Engineering in
1945 at McGill University and worked as a Research Engineer on the Atomic
Energy Project for the National Research Council of Canada from 1945 to 1950.
He then went to Iowa State College, where he completed a M.Sc. and a Ph.D.
degree in Statistics in 1953 and 1955, respectively. After a one-year post-doc
with John Tukey, he became Assistant Director of the Statistical Techniques
Research Group at Princeton University in 1956--1957, and then served as
Professor and Director of Research in Statistics at Rutgers University from
1959 to 1963. In parallel, he also had a 14-year career at Bell Laboratories,
Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1956 to 1969, he was in turn Member of Technical
Staff, Head of the Statistical Models and Methods Research Department, and
Statistical Director in Management Sciences Research. He wrote a number of
influential papers in statistical methodology during that period, notably
testing procedures for normality (the Shapiro--Wilk statistic) and probability
plotting techniques for multivariate data. In 1970, Martin moved into higher
management levels of the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Company. He
occupied various positions culminating as Assistant Vice-President and Director
of Corporate Planning. In 1980, he returned to Canada and became the first
professional statistician to serve as Chief Statistician. His accomplishments
at Statistics Canada were numerous and contributed to a resurgence of the
institution's international standing. He played a crucial role in the
reinstatement of the Cabinet-cancelled 1986 Census.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-STS272 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
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