Jane Worcester

Jane Worcester (died October 8, 1989)[1] was a biostatistician and epidemiologist who became the second tenured female professor, after Martha May Eliot, and the first female chair of biostatistics in the Harvard School of Public Health.[2][3]

Worcester graduated from Smith College in 1931, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and was hired by Harvard biostatistician Edwin B. Wilson to become a human computer at Harvard.[2][4] They continued to work together on theoretical research in biostatistics until Wilson retired as chair of the department in 1945,[2] eventually publishing 27 papers together.[1] Worcester completed a Ph.D. in epidemiology at Harvard under Wilson's supervision in 1947; her dissertation was The Epidemiology of Streptococcal and Non-Streptococcal Respiratory Disease.[5] She joined the Harvard faculty, was granted tenure in 1962,[3] and served as chair from 1973 to 1977, when she retired.[1][2][6]

She became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1960.[7] In 1968, Smith College awarded her an honorary doctorate.[4]

References
  1. Wehrwein, Peter, "Jane Worcester", Harvard Public Health Review, 75th Anniversary Issue, Vol. I, 1954-1971, pp. 89–90
  2. Laird, Nan; Zelen, Marvin (2012), "Harvard University Department of Biostatistics", in Agresti, Alan; Meng, Xiao-Li (eds.), Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U. S., Springer, pp. 77–90, doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-3649-2_7, ISBN 9781461436492. See especially pp. 84–85.
  3. The First Tenured Women Professors at Harvard University (PDF), Harvard University, retrieved 2017-11-07
  4. Honorary Degrees, Smith College, retrieved 2017-11-07
  5. Dissertations 1947–2018, Harvard Department of Biostatistics
  6. The Department of Biostatistics: A Timeline, Harvard School of Public Health, 2015-03-03, retrieved 2017-11-07
  7. ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, archived from the original on 2017-12-01, retrieved 2017-11-07
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