William Gemmell Cochran

William G. Cochran
Cochran in 1952
Born	(1909-07-15)July 15, 1909 Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, Scotland[1]
Died	March 29, 1980(1980-03-29) (aged 70) Orleans, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Education	University of Glasgow University of Cambridge
Known for	Cochran's C test Cochran's Q test Cochran's theorem Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel statistics
Scientific career
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	Rothamsted Experimental Station Iowa State University North Carolina State University Johns Hopkins University Harvard University
Academic advisors	John Wishart
Doctoral students	Donald Rubin Calvin Zippin Helen Abbey Ralph B. D'Agostino

William Gemmell Cochran (15 July 1909 – 29 March 1980) was a prominent statistician. He was born in Scotland but spent most of his life in the United States.

Cochran studied mathematics at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge. He worked at Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1934 to 1939, when he moved to the United States. There he helped establish several departments of statistics. His longest spell in any one university was at Harvard, which he joined in 1957 and from which he retired in 1976.

Cochran wrote many articles and books. His books became standard texts:

• Experimental Designs (with Gertrude Mary Cox) 1950 ISBN 0-471-54567-8
• Cochran, William G. (1977). Sampling Techniques (Third ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-16240-X.
• Statistical Methods Applied to Experiments in Agriculture and Biology by George W. Snedecor (Cochran contributed from the fifth (1956) edition) ISBN 0-8138-1561-4
• Planning and Analysis of Observational Studies (edited by Lincoln E. Moses and Frederick Mosteller) 1983.

• Brief biography Archived 7 July 2005 at the Wayback Machine
• ASA biography Archived 13 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
• Morris Hansen and Frederick Mosteller (1987) William Gemmell Cochran NAS Biographical Memoirs V.56
• Yates, F. (1982). "Obituary: William Gemmell Cochran, 1909-1980". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 145 (4): 521–523. JSTOR 2982120.
• William Gemmell Cochran at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Morris Hansen and Frederick Mosteller, "William Gemmell Cochran", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1987)
• "Designing Clinical Trials" (1961; Evaluation of Drug Therapy)

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