Some reflections on the beginnings and development of statistics in "Your Father's NIH"

Abstract

Samuel Greenhouse was born on January 13, 1918, in the Bronx (New York). He received a B.S. degree in mathematics from the City College of New York in 1938, an M.A. degree from George Washington University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from George Washington University in 1959. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He is also an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and a Fellow of the Council of Epidemiology, American Heart Association. He is a past President of the Eastern North American Region of the Biometric Society and served on the Council of the International Biometric Society. He has served as President of the Washington Statistical Society, as Chairman of Section U (Statistics) of the AAAS and as a member of the AAAS Council Executive Committee. He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Clinical Trials. His tenure at the National Institutes of Health included the years 1948-1974, where he began as a mathematical statistician at the National Cancer Institute. He served next as Chief of the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Section in the Biometry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health (1954-1966), with an interlude as Visiting Professor of Statistics at Stanford University. He joined the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1966 as the Chief of the Epidemiology and Biometry Branch. He wore two hats at NICHD, as Associate Director for Epidemiology and Biometry and as Acting Associate Director for Program Planning and Evaluation at the time of his retirement from NIH in 1974. Since leaving the NIH, he has been Professor of Statistics at George Washington University, serving as Head of the Department of Statistics 1976-1979 and 1986. During this time he was also Visiting Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is currently Associate Director for Research Development at the Biostatistics Center of George Washington University, and Professor Emeritus, George Washington University.