Mary Gibbons Natrella

Mary Gibbons Natrella (September 23, 1922 – May 18, 1988)[1][2][3][4] was an American statistician and "an expert on the application of modern statistical techniques in physical science experimentation and engineering testing".[5] She worked at the National Bureau of Standards, where she wrote their handbook Experimental Statistics (1963).[6] It became one of their "all-time best selling publications"[7] and has been recognized as "a monumental work" with "deep and long-lasting impact on the application of statistics to the planning and analysis of scientific experiments".[8]

Education and career

Mary Blanche Gibbons was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After earlier studies at Keystone College, she completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. She worked as a mathematician for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department from 1942 to 1945, and as a statistician for the Navy beginning in 1945.[2] In 1946, she married Joseph Victor Natrella, a mathematician for the Air Force who later worked for NASA.[2][4] In 1950, she moved from the Navy to the National Bureau of Standards,[2] where she remained until retiring in 1986.[5]

Contributions

Before writing her book, Natrella helped produce defense standard MIL-STD-105 for acceptance sampling. At the National Bureau of Standards, she was responsible for teaching statistics to scientists,[5] and "had a special gift for elucidating difficult statistical concepts".[8]

Recognition and legacy

In 1981, Natrella was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association;[9] her brother-in-law, Vito Natrella,[4] was also a Fellow.[9] She was also a fellow of the American Society for Test Materials.[5] She was given the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 1982.[1]

A scholarship in her and her husband's name is awarded annually by the American Statistical Association, funded by a gift from her husband when she died.[7]

References

  1. 1 2 "Mary Gibbons Natrella, Statistician at NBS", Obituaries, The Washington Post, May 20, 1988
  2. 1 2 3 4 Who's who of American women, Marquis Who's Who, 1976, p. 644, ISBN 9780837904092
  3. ↑ Eisenhart, Churchill (1988), "Obituary: Mary Gibbons Natrella, 1922–1988", The IMS Bulletin, 17: 335–335
  4. 1 2 3 "Joseph Victor Natrella, Mathematician", Obituaries, The Washington Post, September 7, 2005
  5. 1 2 3 4 Croarkin, Carroll; Guthrie, Will (2003), "Origins of the NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods in the Work of Mary Natrella", NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods (PDF), NIST
  6. ↑ Reviews of Experimental Statistics:
  7. 1 2 Mary G. and Joseph Natrella Scholarship, American Statistical Association Quality and Productivity Section, retrieved 2017-11-12
  8. 1 2 Lide, David R. (2002), "Experimental Statistics", A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology, CRC Press, pp. 132–133, ISBN 9780849312472
  9. 1 2 ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, retrieved 2017-11-12
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