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'''Frank WILCOXON'''

b. 2 September 1892 - d. 18 November 1965

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'''Summary.''' Wilcoxon
was a notable chemist and had a significant role in developing
modern insecticides. He and Jack Youden were two of a three person study
group meeting to study R. A. Fisher's newly published book, ''Design of 
Experiments''. Both became statisticians and made important contributions.

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'''Introduction'''

The first edition of ''Statistical Methods for Research Workers''
by [[Fisher, Ronald Aylmer|R. A. Fisher]], later Sir Ronald Fisher, was published in 1925 and
received much attention in the experimental sciences. Some time
late in 1925 or early 1926, a physical chemist, Frank Wilcoxon, a
chemical engineer, [[Youden, William John|William John (Jack)
Youden]], and a biologist, F. E. Denny were
the nucleus of a group that met regularly at the Boyce Thompson
Institute for Plant Research at Yonkers, N. Y. to study Fisher's
statistical methods.

This introduction to statistics had a profound effect on the
careers of Wilcoxon and Youden. Both became leading statisticians
of their time, statisticians with the clear goal of devising and
using statistical methodology to improve research, particularly in
chemistry and the physical sciences. Both Wilcoxon and Youden were
early leaders in the annual, week-long Gordon Research Conference
on Statistics in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

The object of this article is to record highlights of the life and
contributions of Frank Wilcoxon. In this, we have relied heavily on
earlier writings, Bradley and Hollander (1978) and Bradley
(1966).

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'''Early Years'''

Frank Wilcoxon's parents were wealthy, married young, toured Europe
on an extended honeymoon, and rented Glengarriffe Castle near Cork,
Ireland for the expected birth of their first child. Frank and a
twin sister were born on September 2, 1892. Their father was a
poet, outdoorsman, and hunter, the family home being at Catskill,
N.Y. on the banks of the Hudson River. Frank developed a lasting
love for nature and the water but was never a hunter or
fisherman.

Frank's early instruction was by private tutors. He signed on as a
crew member on a freighter in New York harbor at age 16 or so, but
after a week of chipping paint when the ship failed to sail, he
jumped ship. Thinking that he had committed an offense comparable
to desertion from the navy, he fled to a deserted area of West
Virginia where he spent several years manning an oil-well pump and
later climbing trees as a tree surgeon. Hearing of a school in
Boston providing training in forestry, he proceeded to that city
only to find the school closed. He returned home. This led to his
enrolment in the Pennsylvania Military College from which he
graduated in 1917. The school's military system was not to his
liking; early manhood was a difficult period in Wilcoxon's life.
Also, at about this time, his sister died in child birth, a serious
loss to him and an influence in his own decision not to have a
family.

After a World War I position with the Atlas Powder Company in
Houghton, Michigan, Wilcoxon enrolled at Rutgers University in 1920
and completed the M.S. degree in chemistry in 1921. He then
transferred to Cornell University and completed the Ph.D. degree in
physical chemistry in 1924, staying on as a postdoctoral Heckscher
Fellow in 1924-25. At Cornell, Frank met Frederica Facius, an
undergraduate at Cornell and they were married on May 27, 1926.
Frank and Freddie became well known and loved in the statistical
community through their regular participation in the Gordon
Research Conference cited above. On leaving Cornell, Wilcoxon took
a postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the Nichols Copper Company
at the Crop Protection Institute located at the Boyce Thompson
Institute in Yonkers, N.Y., thus being present to participate in
the study group.

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'''Career Positions'''

Frank Wilcoxon was employed by the Nichols Copper Company in
Maspeth in Queens from 1928 to 1929, then returning to Boyce
Thompson as a group leader of an investigation of the actions of
insecticides and fungicides under a grant from the Hermann Frasch
Foundation. Wilcoxon stayed at the Institute until World War II
when he took leave for two years in charge of the control
laboratory of the Ravenna Ordnance Plant operated by the Atlas
Powder Company in Ohio. (Wilcoxon was quite proud of his work with
Atlas in both world wars, particularly in avoiding accidents in
areas under his control.) Frank took a position as group leader of
the insecticide and fungicide laboratory of the American Cyanamid
Company in Stamford, Connecticut in 1943. In his later years at
Boyce Thompson and his earlier ones at Cyanamid, his interest,
study, and knowledge of statistics grew. In 1950 he transferred to
the Lederle Laboratories Division of Cyanamid and developed a
statistical consulting group. Wilcoxon retired in 1957, took on a
part-time consulting assignment at Boyce Thompson, and was
persuaded in 1960 by the present author to take on a half-time,
teaching and research position as Distiguished Lecturer in the
one-year old Department of Statistics at Florida State University
in Tallahassee, where he continued until his death on November 18,
1965.

Frank had two periods in which he engaged in teaching. From 1929 to
1941, although holding full-time jobs, he taught physical chemistry
in evening classes to graduate students at the Brooklyn Polytechnic
Institute. From 1960 to his death, he taught courses in applied
statistics in the newly formed Department of Statistics to natural
science majors at the Florida State University. The courses that he
developed had real life examples, often based on his own research
or consulting experiences, that his students appreciated. They were
less pleased that he gave no credit in grading for any problem with
an incorrect numerical answer regardless of the technical
sophistication of techniques used. He reasoned that incorrect
numerical work was totally unacceptable in a research project and
his students accepted this. Frank Wilcoxon found teaching to be
rewarding and stimulating; he was loved by his students and some
formed long-term associations with him.

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'''Wilcoxon's Research'''

Two brief events illustrate the high regard held for Frank
Wilcoxon's research in both statistics and chemistry.

A joint meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the
Eastern North American Region of the Biometric Society was held in
Chapel Hill, N.C. in April, 1962 [See ''Annals of Mathematical
Statistics''. '''38''',
1220-1223, 1962]. Possibly for the first time, Wilcoxon gave an
invited address, the topic being, two-sample, sequential, rank
tests [Wilcoxon, Rhodes and Bradley (1963) ]. He received a
prolonged standing ovation.

The second event was related to a meeting of the Board of Control
(now Board of Regents) of the Florida state universities in 1961.
The Florida State University Department of Statistics was seeking
the approval of the Board for a Ph.D. program in statistics. The
President of the university asked the present author to be present
at the meeting in case questions arose. When the agenda item was
addressed and the Board was asked for comments, a member of the
Board commented "I see that Frank Wilcoxon is associated with this
proposal and any program with Frank Wilcoxon is good enough for
me." The comment was made by a citrus grower familiar with
Wilcoxon's role in the development of the insecticide malathion.
The proposal was approved without further discussion.

Karas and Savage (1967) list 80 Wilcoxon articles including several
revisions of his well known (1947) pamphlet, "Some Rapid
Approximate Statistical Procedures'', 22 of which dealt with
statistical procedures or use of statistics in applications.
Wilcoxon's statistical work indeed focused on rapid easy
statistical methods; he was interested in ranking methods [See his
famous paper, Wilcoxon (1945), in which he introduced both the
rank-sum and signed ranks tests.], tabling, individual comparisons
by ranking methods, nomograms, and methods of dose and time
response. He came to the Florida State University with an array of
research topics that he had not had time to address in industry and
a number of us had the opportunity of working with him on these
topics. The FSU research included sequential, two-sample, grouped
rank tests, extended tables of significant levels for his 1945 rank
tests, and rank-sum distributions in the two-way classification. He
motivated other FSU research on sequential signed rank tests and
multivariate two-sample nonparametric tests. He also worked with
Cuthbert Daniel on factorial treatment combinations robust against
linear and quadratic trends.

As often happens, independent proposals for the rank-sum test were
later found, some before 1945 [See Kruskal (1957)], but it was
Wilcoxon's work that stimulated a burst of research on ranking
procedures. We do not discuss Wicoxon's publications in chemistry
but they do relate closely to his training and early work
assignments noted above. Major areas of his research relate to
fungicides, fumigants, and insecticides, with investigations of
their actions, effects and toxicities. McCallan, S. E. A. (1966)
reports on Wilcoxon's ressearch in chemistry. Other references are
provided by Bradley and Hollander (1978) along with a Wilcoxon
bibliography on statistics.

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====References====
{|
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|  Bradley, R. A. (1967). Obituary: Frank Wilcoxon. ''Biometrics'', '''22''', 192-194. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|  Bradley, R. A. and Hollander, M. (1978). Wilcoxon, Frank (a biography). ''International Encyclopedia of Statistics'' 2, 1245-1250. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|  Fisher, R. A. (1925). ''Statistical Methods for Research Workers'' Oliver &amp; Boyd, Edinburgh. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|  Karas. J. and Savage, I. R. (1967). Publications of Frank Wilcoxon (1892-1965). ''Biometrics'', '''23''', 1-11. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|5}}||valign="top"|  Kruskal, W. H. (1957). Historical notes on the Wilcoxon unpaired two-sample test, ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'', '''52''', 356-360. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|6}}||valign="top"|  McCallan, S. E. A. (1966). Frank Wilcoxon (September 2, 1892-November 18, 1965). Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, ''Contributions'' 23,  143-145. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|7}}||valign="top"|  Wilcoxon, F. (1945). Individual comparisons by ranking methods, ''Biometrics Bulletin'' 1,  80-83. Reprinted in the Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in the Social Sciences, S-541. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|8}}||valign="top"|  Wilcoxon, F. (1957). ''Some Rapid Approximate Statistical Procedures'', Stamford, Conn. Stamford Research Laboratories, American Cyanamid Company. Revised in 1949 and revised, jointly with Roberta A. Wilcox, in 1964. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|9}}||valign="top"|  Wilcoxon, F., Rhodes, L. J. and Bradley, R. A. (1963). Two sequential two-sample grouped rank tests with applications to screening experiments, ''Biometrics'', '''19''', 58-84.
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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]]