Frank Wilcoxon was a chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

 and statistician

Statistician

A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. The core of that work is to measure, interpret, and describe the world and human activity patterns within it...

, known for the development of several statistical tests

Statistical hypothesis testing

A statistical hypothesis test is a method of making decisions using data, whether from a controlled experiment or an observational study . In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone, according to a pre-determined threshold...

.

Frank Wilcoxon was born to American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 parents on 2 September 1892 in County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. He grew up in Catskill, New York

Catskill (town), New York

Catskill is a town in the southeast part of Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 11,775 at the 2010 census. The western part of the town is in the Catskill Park....

 but received part of his education in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. In 1917 he graduated from Pennsylvania Military College with a B.Sc.

Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

. After the First World War he entered graduate studies, first at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, where he was awarded an M.S.

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 in 1921, and then at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, gaining a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in physical chemistry

Physical chemistry

Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate phenomena in chemical systems in terms of physical laws and concepts...

 in 1924.

Wilcoxon entered a research career, working at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research from 1925 to 1941. He then moved to the Atlas Powder Company, where he designed and directed the Control Laboratory, before joining the American Cyanamid Company

American Cyanamid

American Cyanamid was a large, diversified, American chemical manufacturer, founded by Frank Washburn in 1907. It was the only United States firm manufacturing the polio vaccine of the Sabin type....

 in 1943. During this time he developed an interest in inferential statistics through the study of R.A. Fisher

Ronald Fisher

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...

's 1925 text, Statistical Methods for Research Workers

Statistical Methods for Research Workers

Statistical Methods for Research Workers is a classic 1925 book on statistics by the statistician R.A. Fisher. It is considered by some to be one of the 20th century's most influential books on statistical methods. According to ,...

. He retired in 1957.

Over his career Wilcoxon published over 70 papers, but the paper for which he is remembered is a 1945 paper containing the two new statistical tests that still bear his name, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test

Wilcoxon signed-rank test

The Wilcoxon signed-rank test is a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test used when comparing two related samples or repeated measurements on a single sample to assess whether their population mean ranks differ The Wilcoxon signed-rank test is a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test used...

. These are non-parametric alternatives to the unpaired and paired Student's t-test

Student's t-test

A t-test is any statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic follows a Student's t distribution if the null hypothesis is supported. It is most commonly applied when the test statistic would follow a normal distribution if the value of a scaling term in the test statistic were known...

s respectively. He died on 18 November 1965 after a brief illness.

External links

• Brookes, E. Bruce (2001) Tales of Statisticians: Frank Wilcoxon. In Acquiring Statistics:Techniques and Concepts for Historians. (accessed 26 November 2005)
• Portraits of Statisticians Frank Wilcoxon
• Florida State University Frank Wilcoxon