View source for Biography:Margaret Merrell

{{short description|American biostatistician}}
'''Margaret Merrell''' (December 3, 1900<ref>''Cook County, Illinois, Birth Certificates Index, 1871-1922''</ref> – 21, 1995){{r|glob}} was an American biostatistician who taught at [[Organization:Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins University]] for many years{{r|jhu1}} and became the first female full professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.{{r|thomas}} She is known for her research with [[Biography:Lowell Reed|Lowell Reed]] on the construction of [[Social:Life table|life table]]s.{{r|jhu1|ltt}} She also observed that, for longitudinal data on individuals, fitting a curve to each individual and then averaging the parameters describing the curve will typically give different results than averaging the data values of the individuals and fitting a single curve to the averaged data.{{r|tanner}}

==Biography==
Merrell was born in La Grange, Illinois.{{r|glob}} She entered [[Organization:Wellesley College|Wellesley College]] as an honor student from Framingham High School,{{r|welhon}} and became vice-president of the Wellesley mathematics club.{{r|amm}} She graduated in 1922, and took a position as a schoolteacher in Baltimore.{{r|jhu2}} She joined Johns Hopkins as an instructor and graduate student in 1925, and completed her Sc.D. there in 1930.{{r|jhu1}} Her dissertation, supervised by Lowell Reed, was ''The Relationship of Individual Growth to Average Growth''.{{r|mgp}}

After completing her doctorate, Merrell remained on the Johns Hopkins faculty.{{r|jhu1}} During [[Social:World War II|World War II]], she consulted with the U.S. Army on treatments for sexually transmitted diseases and for [[Medicine:Motion sickness|motion sickness]].{{r|jhu2}} As a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, she "reportedly carried most of her department's teaching load"{{r|rossiter}} and was described as "the intellectual power behind the throne" of the department.{{r|jhu1}} She was promoted to full professor in 1957,{{r|thomas}} served as acting chair of biostatistics in 1957–1958, and retired in 1959.{{r|jhu1|thomas}} She died in 1995, in a nursing home in Berlin, New Hampshire.{{r|glob}}

==Honors and awards==
She was honored by the American Statistical Association in 1951 by election as a fellow of the association.{{r|fasa}}

The Helen Abbey and Margaret Merrell Professorship in Biostatistics Education at [[Organization:Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins University]] is named after her and Professor [[Biography:Helen Abbey|Helen Abbey]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Helen Abbey and Margaret Merrell Professorship in Biostatistics Education |url=https://professorships.jhu.edu/professorship/helen-abbey-and-margaret-merrell-professorship-in-biostatistical-education/ |website=Johns Hopkins University |accessdate=15 March 2020}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Biography:Helen Abbey|Helen Abbey]]

==References==
{{reflist|refs=

<ref name=amm>{{citation|title=The Mathematics Club of Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.|first=Mary|last=Wheeler|page=419|journal=[[American Mathematical Monthly]]|date=November–December 1922|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bo3xAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA419|doi=10.1080/00029890.1922.11986185 }}</ref>

<ref name=fasa>{{citation|url=http://www.amstat.org/ASA/Your-Career/Awards/ASA-Fellows-list.aspx|title=ASA Fellows list|publisher=American Statistical Association|accessdate=2017-11-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201042456/https://www.amstat.org/ASA/Your-Career/Awards/ASA-Fellows-list.aspx|archive-date=2017-12-01|url-status=dead}}</ref>

<ref name=glob>{{citation|title=Margaret Merrell, 95, of N.H.; retired biostatistics professor|newspaper=The Boston Globe|date=December 25, 1995|url=https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8357325.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107112129/https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8357325.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 7, 2017}}</ref>

<ref name=jhu1>{{citation|title=Margaret Merrell, Faculty Member: 1925–1959|url=https://www.jhsph.edu/departments/biostatistics/about-us/history/margaret-merrell.html|work=Biostatistics History|publisher=Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health|accessdate=2017-11-06}}</ref>

<ref name=jhu2>{{citation|title=Margaret Merrell, ScD|work=Heroes of Public Health|url=https://www.jhsph.edu/about/history/heroes-of-public-health/margaret-merrell.html|publisher=Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health|accessdate=2017-11-06}}</ref>

<ref name=ltt>{{citation|pages=22–23|contribution=The Reed–Merrell Method|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0FO0BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA22|title=Life Table Techniques and Their Applications|series=Studies in Population|first1=Krishnan|last1=Namboodiri|first2=C. M.|last2=Suchindran|publisher=Academic Press|year=2013|isbn=9781483288888}}</ref>

<ref name=mgp>{{mathgenealogy|id=49773}}</ref>

<ref name=tanner>{{citation|title=A History of the Study of Human Growth|first=James Mourilyan|last=Tanner|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1981|isbn=9780521224888|page=342|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EJjP2UX1tLAC&pg=PA342}}</ref>

<ref name=rossiter>{{citation|page=207|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jJr6ZfkDbE4C&pg=PA207|title=Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940|journal = Physics Today|volume=1|issue = 6|first=Margaret W.|last=Rossiter|publisher=JHU Press|year=1984|isbn=9780801825095|bibcode = 1983PhT....36f..65R|doi = 10.1063/1.2915710}}</ref>

<ref name=thomas>{{citation|title=Health and Humanity: A History of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 1935–1985|first=Karen Kruse|last=Thomas|publisher=JHU Press|year=2016|isbn=9781421421094|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2PJADAAAQBAJ&pg=PT102|page=102 (elect.ed.)}}</ref>

<ref name=welhon>{{citation|title=Honorable Mention Class of 1922|page=125|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=psogAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA125|journal=The Wellesley Alumnae Quarterly|volume=4|issue=2|date=January 1920}}</ref>

}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Merrell, Margaret}}
[[Category:American statisticians]]

{{Sourceattribution|Margaret Merrell}}