John Tukey
As a chemist-turned-topologist-turned statistician, John Wilder Tukey played a key role in the development and study of statistics in the mid 1900's. The field of statistics has benefited tremendously from his contributions.
J. W. Tukey was born on July 16, 1915, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was only child of Ralph H. and Adah M.Tukey. John was schooled at home by his parents who were teachers. He went to formal education at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island and studied mathematics and chemistry. He completed studies with a Master’s degree in chemistry. He then went on to study for a doctorate in mathematics at Princeton and received his doctorate in 1939.
Denumerability in topology was his impressive thesis which was then published in 1940 as Convergence and Uniformity in topology. It was the second book in the Annals of Mathematics Studies of the Princeton University Press. However, this was not Tukey's first publication. Even prior to obtaining his doctorate, he wrote three papers that had been published.
After receiving his doctorate, Tukey became an instructor at Princeton University. At this time, his work was mainly concentrated in the area of abstract mathematics. Also at this time, World War II was becoming a great influence on people's, including Tukey's, lives. In hopes of contributing to the war efforts, Tukey then joined the Fire Control Research.
John W. Tukey made many important contributions to the field of statistics. Many consider his first major contribution the introduction of modern techniques for estimation of the spectra of time series. He also began a major research movement in graphical methods for data analysis in statistics. Three of Tukey's specific contributions are the Box-and-Whisker Plot, the Stem-and-Leaf Diagram, and Tukey's Paired Comparisons.
As you can see, John Wilder Tukey is an extremely bright, ambitious man. He has definitely made many valuable contributions to the field of statistics.