Gertrude Mary Cox
Born: January 13, 1900 in Dayton, Iowa
Died: October 17, 1978 in Durham, North Carolina
To see a picture of G.M. Cox, click here:
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/coxofice.jpg
Gertrude Mary Cox graduated from Perry High School in Perry, Iowa in 1918.
Upon graduating from high school, Cox decided that she wanted to become a deaconess
in the Methodist Church. In 1925, she changed her mind and decided to attend Iowa
State College where she studied both mathematics and statistics. She received her B.S. in
1929 and obtained the first ever M.S. given by Iowa State in statistics two years later.
In 1931, she decided to go to the University of California at Berkeley to continue
her graduate education. While she was there, she began working on a doctorate in
psychological studies. However she left in 1933 to return to Iowa State to do work on the
design of experiments and therefore was unable to obtain her doctorate. She was
eventually appointed to assistant professor of statistics at Iowa State in 1939.
In 1940, Cox went to North Carolina State University where she was the first
head of the new department of experimental statistics. Cox received this job after asking
George Snedecor to include her name on a list of people, all of which were male, that he
would recommend for the job. Later, she became director of the Institute of Statistics of
the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of the
North Carolina State College, which was being run by Cochran.
She collaborated with Cochran in 1950 to publish Experimental Design, only the
second book ever written on design of experiments. She took her final position as
Director of Statistics at the Research Triangle Institute in Durham, North Carolina in
1960, where she remained until her retirement in 1964.
Gertrude Cox also was a consultant for such companies as the World Health
Organization in Guatemala, the Government of Thailand, and many other overseas
organizations. During her lifetime, Cox made many important contributions to the field
of statistics. She was responsible for implementing many statistics departments and also
did important work in experimental design.
The information contained in this biography was obtained from the following source(s):
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Cox.html
“Cox, Gertrude Mary.” Biographical Memoirs. V.59. 1990. 116-133.