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'''Gertrude Mary COX'''

b. 13 January 1900 - d. 17 October 1978

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'''Summary.''' Gertrude Cox is principally known as a gifted statistical
administrator and entrepreneur, as well as for her contributions to
psychological statistics and experimental design.

Gertrude Cox was born on a farm near Dayton, Iowa, USA. The family soon moved
to the small town of Perry, Iowa, where she attended public school.
Cox was particularly close to her mother, Emma,
and later wrote of her: "I learned from my mother the value and joy of 
doing for other people. She nursed the sick for miles around and raised
us to be active church workers".

Gertrude Cox's ambition was to help others. She took a two-year course
in social science, then spent another two years as a housemother for
sixteen small orphan boys in Montana. As preparation for becoming the
superintendent of the orphanage, she decided to enroll at Iowa State
College. Majoring in mathematics, because it was easy for her, she
elected courses in psychology, sociology, and crafts - courses useful to
her in her chosen career. In 1929 she received her B.S degree.

To help pay her college expenses Cox did computing. [[Snedecor, George Waddel|George Snedecor]]
- her calculus professor - having asked her to work with the comptometers
in his computing laboratory. 
Perhaps because of this computing experience, Cox became interested in
statistics. But the Mathematics Department at that time would not award
an assistantship to a woman, and she financed her graduate work with
assistantships in psychology and art. In 1931, she received the first
Master's degree ever given by Iowa State in statistics but was turned
down for a job teaching high school mathematics because she did not
have the required courses in education. She decided to continue her
graduate career.

Because of her love of people and her desire to learn what "made them
tick", Cox chose psychology as her research area. With a graduate
assistantship at the University of California, Berkeley, she began work
on a doctorate in psychological statistics. But she stayed only two years.
In 1933, Iowa State established its Statistical Laboratory under the
direction of George Snedecor, Cox's former mentor, and he persuaded her
to return home to help him. Back in Iowa, she continued her interest
in psychology and worked on the evaluation of aptitude tests, test
scoring procedures, and the analysis of psychological data.

At the same time, she was put in charge of establishing a Computing Laboratory
and consulted in and taught experimental designs. In 1934 she began to
teach `Design of Experiments' - a course that would become renowned - to
follow Snedecor's `Statistical Methods'. Both courses were originally
taught from mimeographed materials. In 1937, Snedecor's material came
out in book form, but Cox only published her design material in 1950,
when it came out as a collaborative effort with W.G. Cochran.

Gertrude Cox's course was built around a multitude of specific examples
in a variety of areas of experimentation. Both as a teacher and as a
consultant she particularly emphasized randomization, replication and 
experimental controls as procedures essential to experimental design.

Though Gertrude Cox was enrolled in a PhD program in mathematics at
Iowa State, her teaching and consulting duties did not leave her enough time
to write a dissertation. An `assistant' from 1933, she was appointed
research assistant professor in 1939, though her design course was
listed under Professor Snedecor's name.

In 1940 Snedecor was asked to recommend candidates to head the new
Department of Experimental Statistics in the School of Agriculture at
North Carolina State College. "Why didn't you put my name on the list?"
Cox asked when he showed her his all-male list of candidates, and
her name was added to the accompanying letter in the following postscript:
"If you would consider a woman for this position, I would recommend
Gertrude Cox of my staff." This terse note was to have far-reaching 
consequences for statistics, for not only was Cox considered, she was selected.

Gertrude Cox became the head of North Carolina State's Department of
Experimental Statistics on November 1, 1940. She recruited capable
applied statisticians to teach basic statistical methods and 
she made them available to consult with researchers on procedures
for designing experiments and analysing data. To secure at least one
faculty member for every agricultural  discipline, she had to start
from scratch. "There weren't any statisticians to hire when I first
started", she later wrote. "I had to choose from other fields and
train them."

Another innovative feature of the Cox statistics program was a series
of one-week working conferences on specific topics. In addition to
experimental and mathematical statistics, these conferences covered
many research areas involving statistics. Many were held during World
War II. Cox, realizing the importance of quality control methods to
the war effort, included engineering statisticians on the faculty.

Gertrude Cox was uniquely able to secure outside financial support.
In 1944 she obtained a grant from the  General Education Board to
establish and direct an Institute of Statistics.
This grant enabled her to add six faculty
members to her department, including W.G. Cochran, who was to
develop a graduate program. In 1945, the General Education Board made
an additional grant to establish a Consolidated University of North Carolina
Institute of Statistics, with a Department of Mathematical Statistics
at Chapel Hill, to concentrate on graduate training and research in
statistical theory. With complimentary graduate programs, the two departments
produced many outstanding applied and theoretical statisticians.
Cox also persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to support a
substantial program in statistical genetics and she obtained funds from
the Ford Foundation for a joint program in dynamic economics with the
London School of Economics.

Cox's first contact with statistics came in the computing laboratory,
and she remained a strong advocate of the integral connection between
statistical analysis and an up-to-date computing facility.  She made
certain that the Institute was in the forefront when it came to statistical
software, and Raleigh statisticians designed the initial SAS programs.

Gertrude Cox and seven other members of the North Carolina State
statistics faculty arranged for a Statistical Division as part of
in the proposed not-for-profit Research Triangle Institute (RTI)
between Raleigh and Chapel Hill. RTI was established in 1959 and
Cox retired from North Carolina State in 1960 to direct its Statistics
Research Division. During her five-year tenure, RTI - and especially
the Statistics Division - became an internationally recognized
consulting and research organization.

Gertrude Cox's major contribution to science was her ability to
organize and administer programs, but her early accomplishments in
psychological statistics and experimental design were widely
recognized. 

Cox was a founding member of the International Biometric Society
in 1947, served as editor of its journal, ''Biometrics'', from
1947 to 1955, and was president from 1968 to 1969. She was
president of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 1956.

In 1959 Cox received the highest recognition the Consolidated
University of North Carolina can confer upon its faculty - the
O. Max Gardner Award. The citation named her a `statistical
frontierswoman'. In 1970, North Carolina State honored her by
designating the building in which the Statistics Department is
located Cox Hall. Her most treasured honor came in 1975, when
she was elected to the National Academy of Science.

Cox was a world traveller who particularly enjoyed
working in developing countries wherr she could offer advice and
inspiration. Egypt and Thailand were particular favourites.

Gertrude Cox loved people, especially children. She always brought
back gifts from her travels and was especially generous at Christmas
time. She considered the faculty members and their families to be her 
family and entertained them frequently.

In 1976, Cox learned that she had leukemia but remained sure that she
could conquer it up to the end. While under treatment at Duke University
Hospital she kept detailed records of her progress.
With characteristic testy humor she called herself "the experimental unit", 
and died as she had lived, fighting to the end.


====References====
{|
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|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|   Anderson, R.L. (1990). Gertrude Mary Cox 1900-1978,  ''Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences'', '''59''', 116-132. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|   Anderson, R.L., Monroe, R.J. and Nelson, L.A. (1979). Gertrude Cox - a modern pioneer in statistics, ''Biometrics'', '''35''', 3-7.
|-
|}
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<references />

Reprinted with permission from
Christopher Charles Heyde and Eugene William Seneta (Editors),
Statisticians of the Centuries, Springer-Verlag Inc., New York, USA.

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]