death_date death_place birth_place article_title birth_date known_for image employer education name occupation
17 october 1978 durham , north carolina dayton , iowa gertrude mary cox
 13 january 1900 first president of the american statistical association . female elected into the international statistical institute ; gertrude mary cox.jpg professor director of statistics , research triangle institute of statistics , north carolina state university ; b.s. , 1931 in mathematics , 1929 ; masters in statistics gertrude mary cox statistician
gertrude mary cox

gertrude mary cox -lrb- january 13 , 1900 -- october 17 , 1978 -rrb- was an influential american statistician and founder of the department of experimental statistics at north carolina state university .
she was later appointed director of both the institute of statistics of the consolidated university of north carolina and the statistics research division of north carolina state university .
her most important and influential research dealt with experimental design ; she wrote an important book on the subject with w. g. cochran .
in 1949 cox became the first female elected into the international statistical institute and in 1956 was president of the american statistical association .
gertrude cox was born in dayton , iowa on january 13 , 1900 .
she studied at perry high school in perry , iowa , graduating in 1918 .
at this time she decided to become a deaconess in the methodist church and worked towards that end .
however , in 1925 , she decided to continue her education at iowa state college in ames where she studied mathematics and statistics and was awarded a b.s. in 1929 and a master 's degree in statistics in 1931 .
from 1931 to 1933 cox undertook graduate studies in statistics at the university of california at berkeley , then returned to iowa state college as assistant in the statistical laboratory .
here she worked on the design of experiments .
in 1939 she was appointed assistant professor of statistics at iowa state .
in 1940 cox was appointed professor of statistics at north carolina state university at raleigh .
there she headed the new department of experimental statistics .
in 1945 she became director of the institute of statistics of the consolidated university of north carolina , and the statistics research division of the north carolina state college which was run by william gemmell cochran .
in the same year of 1945 cox became the editor of `` biometrics bulletin '' and of `` biometrics '' and she held this editorship for 10 years .
in 1947 she was a founder member of the international biometric society .
in 1950 she published a joint work with william cochran , `` experimental design '' , which became the major reference work on the design of experiments for statisticians for years afterwards .
in 1960 she took up her final post as director of statistics at the research triangle institute in durham , north carolina .
she held this post until she retired in 1965 .
cox received many honours .
in 1949 she became the first woman elected into the international statistical institute .
in 1956 she was elected president of the american statistical association while in 1975 she was elected to the national academy of sciences .
