Biography:Mary Gibbons Natrella
Mary Gibbons Natrella (September 23, 1922 – May 18, 1988)[1][2][3][4] was an American statistician and "an expert on the application of modern statistical techniques in physical science experimentation and engineering testing".[5] She worked at the National Bureau of Standards, where she wrote their Handbook 91, Experimental Statistics (1963).[6][7] It became one of their "all-time best selling publications"[8] and has been recognized as "a monumental work" with "deep and long-lasting impact on the application of statistics to the planning and analysis of scientific experiments".[9]
Education and career
Mary Blanche Gibbons was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After earlier studies at Keystone College, she completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. She worked as a mathematician for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department from 1942 to 1945, and as a statistician for the Navy beginning in 1945.[2] In 1946, she married Joseph Victor Natrella, a mathematician for the Air Force who later worked for NASA.[2][4] In 1950, she moved from the Navy to the National Bureau of Standards,[2] where she remained until retiring in 1986.[5]
Contributions
Before writing her book, Natrella helped produce defense standard MIL-STD-105 for acceptance sampling. At the National Bureau of Standards, she was responsible for teaching statistics to scientists,[5] and "had a special gift for elucidating difficult statistical concepts".[9]
Recognition and legacy
In 1981, Natrella was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association;[10] her brother-in-law, Vito Natrella,[4] was also a Fellow.[10] She was also a fellow of the American Society for Test Materials.[5] She was given the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 1982.[1] She died in 1988 and was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.[11]
A scholarship in her and her husband's name is awarded annually by the American Statistical Association, funded by a gift from her husband when she died.[8]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Mary Gibbons Natrella, Statistician at NBS", The Washington Post, May 20, 1988, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1988/05/20/washington-physician-john-finnegan-dies/0a411c02-7f6f-44c1-ac3d-fcbe6fa304d7/
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Who's who of American women, Marquis Who's Who, 1976, p. 644, ISBN 9780837904092, https://books.google.com/books?id=oinBBJ5pYa0C
- ↑ Eisenhart, Churchill (1988), "Obituary: Mary Gibbons Natrella, 1922–1988", The IMS Bulletin 17: 335
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Joseph Victor Natrella, Mathematician", The Washington Post, September 7, 2005, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601723.html
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Croarkin, Carroll; Guthrie, Will (2003), "Origins of the NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods in the Work of Mary Natrella", NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods, NIST, http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/natrella.pdf
- ↑ Natrella, M G (1963). Experimental Statistics, NBS Handbook 91. Library of Congress card number 63-60072: National Bureau of Standards. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/sp958-lide/132-134.pdf.
- ↑ Reviews of Experimental Statistics:
- C. H. (June 1964), Journal of the American Statistical Association 59 (306): 628, doi:10.2307/2283035
- James E. Hall (July–August 1964), Operations Research 12 (4): 640–641, JSTOR 167715
- Truman L. Koehler (November 1965), Technometrics 7 (4): 651, doi:10.1080/00401706.1965.10490307, JSTOR 1266404
- G. Leti (1966), Genus 22 (1/4): 395–396, JSTOR 29787716
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Mary G. and Joseph Natrella Scholarship, American Statistical Association Quality and Productivity Section, http://community.amstat.org/qp/scholarshipsawards/marygandjosephnatrellascholarship, retrieved 2017-11-12
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Lide, David R. (2002), "Experimental Statistics", A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology, CRC Press, pp. 132–133, ISBN 9780849312472, https://books.google.com/books?id=hrizEY2BWOoC&pg=PA132
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, http://www.amstat.org/ASA/Your-Career/Awards/ASA-Fellows-list.aspx, retrieved 2017-11-12
- ↑ Kitt, William H. (2010-04-12). "Deceased Name, Birth Date, Death Date, Burial Location". p. 7. http://www.ivyhill.org/ihc-web-site-categories%2004-12-10.pdf.
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