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John Tukey

John Wilder Tukey (/ˈtuːki/; June 16, 1915 – July 26, 2000) was an American mathematician and statistician, best known for the development of the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot.[2] The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name. He is also credited with coining the term bit and the first published use of the word software.

"Tukey" redirects here. For other uses, see Tukey (disambiguation).

John Tukey

(1915-06-16)June 16, 1915

New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.

July 26, 2000(2000-07-26) (aged 85)

New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.

Topology

On Denumerability in Topology[1]

Solomon Lefschetz[1]

Biography[edit]

Tukey was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1915, to a Latin teacher father and a private tutor. He was mainly taught by his mother and attended regular classes only for certain subjects like French.[3] Tukey obtained a B.A. in 1936 and M.S. in 1937 in chemistry, from Brown University, before moving to Princeton University, where in 1939 he received a PhD in mathematics after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "On denumerability in topology".[4][5][6]


During World War II, Tukey worked at the Fire Control Research Office and collaborated with Samuel Wilks and William Cochran. He is claimed to have helped design the U-2 spy plane. After the war, he returned to Princeton, dividing his time between the university and AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1962, Tukey was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[7] He became a full professor at 35 and founding chairman of the Princeton statistics department in 1965.[3]


Among many contributions to civil society, Tukey served on a committee of the American Statistical Association that produced a report critiquing the statistical methodology of the Kinsey Report, Statistical Problems of the Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which summarized "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey".


From 1960 to 1980, Tukey helped design the NBC television network polls used to predict and analyze elections. He was also a consultant to the Educational Testing Service, the Xerox Corporation, and Merck & Company.


During the 1970s and early 1980s, Tukey played a key role in the design and conduct of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.


He was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Nixon in 1973.[3] He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1982 "For his contributions to the spectral analysis of random processes and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm".


Tukey retired in 1985. He died in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on July 26, 2000.

Coining the term bit[edit]

While working with John von Neumann on early computer designs, Tukey introduced the word bit as a portmanteau of binary digit.[17] The term bit was first used in an article by Claude Shannon in 1948.

List of pioneers in computer science

Andrews, David F.; Bickel, Peter J.; Hampel, Frank R.; Huber, Peter J.; Rogers, W. H.; (1972). Robust estimates of location: survey and advances. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-08113-7. OCLC 369963.

Tukey, John Wilder

; Tukey, John Wilder (1998). Graphical Analysis of Multiresponse Data. Chapman & Hall/CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-8493-0384-5. OCLC 154674707.[18][19][20][21]

Basford, Kaye E.

; Tukey, John Wilder (1959). The measurement of power spectra from the point of view of communications engineering. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-60507-4.

Blackman, R. B.

; Mosteller, Charles Frederick; Tukey, John Wilder (1953). Statistical problems of the Kinsey report on sexual behavior in the human male. Journal of the American Statistical Association. doi:10.1080/01621459.1953.10501194.

Cochran, William Gemmell

Cooley, James W.; Tukey, John W. (1965). . Math. Comput. 19 (90): 297–301. doi:10.2307/2003354. JSTOR 2003354.* Hoaglin, David C.; Mosteller, Charles Frederick; Tukey, John Wilder, eds. (1983). Understanding Robust and Exploratory Data Analysis. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-09777-8. OCLC 8495063.

"An algorithm for the machine calculation of complex Fourier series"

Hoaglin, David C.; ; Tukey, John Wilder, eds. (1985). Exploring Data Tables, Trends and Shapes. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-09776-1. OCLC 11550398.

Mosteller, Charles Frederick

Hoaglin, David C.; ; Tukey, John Wilder, eds. (1991). Fundamentals of exploratory analysis of variance. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-52735-0. OCLC 23180322.

Mosteller, Charles Frederick

Morgenthaler, Stephan; , eds. (1991). Configural polysampling: a route to practical robustness. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-52372-7. OCLC 22381036.

Tukey, John Wilder

; Tukey, John Wilder (1977). Data analysis and regression: a second course in statistics. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-04854-4. OCLC 3235470.

Mosteller, Charles Frederick

(1940). Convergence and Uniformity in Topology. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09568-4. OCLC 227948615.

Tukey, John Wilder

(1977). Exploratory Data Analysis. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-07616-5. OCLC 3058187.

Tukey, John Wilder

; Ross, Ian C.; Bertrand, Verna (1973). Index to statistics and probability. R & D Press. ISBN 978-0-88274-001-0. OCLC 745715.

Tukey, John Wilder

Royal Society obit. by Peter McCullagh

published in The Annals of Statistics

John W. Tukey: His Life and Professional Contributions

in Notices of the American Mathematical Society

John Wilder Tukey (1915–2000)

Memories of John Tukey

by Mary Bittrich

Short biography

, The New York Times, 2000-07-28

"John Tukey, 85, Statistician; Coined the Word 'Software'"

special issue of Statistical Science

"Remembering John W. Tukey"

at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

John Wilder Tukey