Person: Kruskal, William
William Kruskal was an American mathematician and statistician best known for his work on the analysis of variance.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- At this stage Kruskal was not thinking about a future academic career.
- Trying to find answers to foundational problems led him to read work by Quine and, once he realised that Quine taught at Harvard, Kruskal tried to change to complete his degree there.
- After graduating from Harvard with an S.B. in 1940, Kruskal remained there for a further year to take a Master's Degree in mathematics.
- Norma and William decided that his working conditions would be better if he took a US Navy commission, which he did.
- In 1948 he left Kruskal & Kruskal to become a full-time student at Columbia.
- Allen Wallis, the founding Chairman of the University of Chicago's Statistics Department, offered Kruskal the position of instructor at Chicago with the agreement that he would become an assistant professor once he was awarded his doctorate.
- At Chicago he began a joint research project with Wallis, while Scheffé had left Columbia University and Howard Levene took over as Kruskal's advisor.
- In 1952 Kruskal published two important papers both of which came out of his work with Wallis.
- The paper A nonparametric test for the several sample problem was authored by Kruskal alone while the second Use of ranks in one-criterion analysis of variance was a joint publication with Wallis.
- In 1954 Kruskal began a collaboration with Leo Goodman on measures of association.
- Kruskal spent a year as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
- He appointed Allen Wallis to head the Commission and appointed Kruskal and others such as Tukey as members.
- The recommendation was followed up and Kruskal subsequently became the first chairman of the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics, a position he held from 1971 to 1978.
- Kruskal edited The Annals of Mathematical Statistics from 1958 to 1961.
- Kruskal was elected a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Born 10 October 1919, New York City, New York, USA. Died 21 April 2005, Chicago, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
