## Statistical Science

### A Conversation with Norman L. Johnson

#### Abstract

Norman Lloyd Johnson was born on January 9, 1917, in Ilford, Essex, just east of London, England. He received degrees at University College London in 1936 (B.Sc. in Mathematics) and 1937/38 (B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Statistics). In 1938, at age 21, he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Statistics at UCL. During World War II, he served under Egon Pearson as Experimental Officer with the Ordnance Board.

He returned in 1945 to the Statistics Department at University College London and remained there until 1962, as Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer and then Reader. In 1948 he obtained his doctorate in Statistics at UCL, based on his work on the Johnson system of frequency curves. In the following year he became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in London. Two visiting appointments in the United States, at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 1952–1953 and at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1960–1961, led to his permanent appointment as Professor in the Department of Statistics at UNC in the Fall of 1962. He served as Chairman 1971–1976 and officially retired in 1982, but has continued to be active in scholarship and research as Professor Emeritus.

Norman Johnson is the author or co-author of 17 books, including two textbooks, each in two volumes, and the Distributions in Statistics series initiated with Sam Kotz, 1969–1972, which in its second edition will have run to six volumes. Along with Sam Kotz he has been Editor of 14 books, including the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences and the three-volume Breakthroughs in Statistics series, all of which are invaluable sources of information for students, teachers and researchers. He is author of more than 180 papers, monographs and tables, many appearing in journals such as Biometrika, The Annals of Mathematical Statistics and Journal of the American Statistical Association. His co-authors include B. L. Welch, Egon Pearson, Florence David, Fred Leone, Harry Smith, Jr., I. W. Burr, James Grizzle, A. W. Kemp, N. Balakrishnan and his wife Regina Elandt-Johnson. He is a Fellow and recipient of the Wilks Award of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and recipient of the Shewhart Medal, American Society for Quality Control. He is featured in the 1995 ASA videotape “An Interview with Norman L. Johnson.”

Norman L. Johnson died in Chapel Hill November 18, 2004.

#### Article information

Source
Statist. Sci. Volume 19, Number 3 (2004), 544-560.

Dates
First available in Project Euclid: 16 March 2005

Permanent link to this document
http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1110999314

Digital Object Identifier
doi:10.1214/088342304000000170

Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet)
MR2185630

Zentralblatt MATH identifier
1100.01509

#### Citation

Read, Campbell B. A Conversation with Norman L. Johnson. Statist. Sci. 19 (2004), no. 3, 544--560. doi:10.1214/088342304000000170. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1110999314.

#### References

• Archbold, J. W. and Johnson, N. L. (1956). A method of constructing partially balanced incomplete block designs. Ann. Math. Statist. 27 624--632.
• David, F. N. and Johnson, N. L. (1956). Some tests of significance with ordered variables. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 18 1--31.
• Elandt-Johnson, R. C. and Johnson, N. L. (1980). Survival Models and Data Analysis. Wiley, New York.
• Elderton, W. P. and Johnson, N. L. (1969). Systems of Frequency Curves. Cambridge Univ. Press.
• Johnson, N. L. (1940). Parabolic test for linkage. Ann. Math. Statist. 11 227--253.
• Johnson, N. L. (1955). Systems of frequency curves derived from the first law of Laplace. Trabajos Estadíst. 5 283--291.
• Johnson, N. L. (1958). Road traffic accidents in Europe, 1955--1957. International Road Safety Review 5 35--37.
• Johnson, N. L. (1959). A proof of Wald's theorem on cumulative sums. Ann. Math. Statist. 30 1245--1247.
• Johnson, N. L. (1961). Sequential analysis: A survey. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. A 124 372--411.
• Johnson, N. L. and Garwood, F. (1957). An analysis of the claims experience of a motor insurance company. J. Institute of Actuaries 86 279--298.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kitchen, J. O. (1971a). Some notes on tables to facilitate fitting $S_B$ curves. Biometrika 58 223--226.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kitchen, J. O. (1971b). Tables to facilitate fitting $S_B$ curves II: Both terminals known. Biometrika 58 657--663.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kotz, S. (1969). Distributions in Statistics. Discrete Distributions. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kotz, S. (1970). Distributions in Statistics. Continuous Univariate Distributions 1, 2. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kotz, S. (1972). Distributions in Statistics. Continuous Multivariate Distributions. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kotz, S. (1977). Urn Models and Their Application. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L. and Kotz, S., eds. (1997). Leading Personalities in Statistical Sciences. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L., Kotz, S. and Balakrishnan, N. (1994). Continuous Univariate Distributions 1, 2nd ed. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L., Kotz, S. and Balakrishnan, N. (1995). Continuous Univariate Distributions 2, 2nd ed. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L., Kotz, S. and Balakrishnan, N. (1997). Discrete Multivariate Distributions. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L., Kotz, S. and Kemp, A. W. (1992). Univariate Discrete Distributions, 2nd ed. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L., Kotz, S. and Wu, X. (1991). Inspection Errors for Attributes in Quality Control. Chapman and Hall, London.
• Johnson, N. L. and Leone, F. (1964). Statistics and Experimental Design in Engineering and the Physical Sciences 1, 2. Wiley, New York.
• Johnson, N. L. and Tetley, H. (1949, 1950). Statistics: An Intermediate Textbook 1, 2. Cambridge Univ. Press.
• Johnson, N. L. and Welch, B. L. (1939). On the calculation of the cumulants of the $\chi$-distribution. Biometrika 31 216--218.
• Johnson, N. L. and Welch, B. L. (1940). Applications of the non-central $t$-distribution. Biometrika 31 362--389.
• Kotz, S., Balakrishnan, N. and Johnson, N. L. (2000). Continuous Multivariate Distributions 1, 2nd ed. Wiley, New York.
• Kotz, S., Balakrishnan, N. and Johnson, N. L. (2004). Continuous Multivariate Distributions 2, 2nd ed. Wiley, New York. To appear.
• Kotz, S. and Johnson, N. L., eds. (1992). Breakthroughs in Statistics 1, 2. Springer, New York.
• Kotz, S. and Johnson, N. L. (1993). Process Capability Indices. Chapman and Hall, London.
• Kotz, S. and Johnson, N. L., eds. (1997). Breakthroughs in Statistics 3. Springer, New York.
• Kotz, S. and Johnson, N. L. (2002). Process capability indices: A review (with discussion). J. Quality Technology 34 2--53.
• Kotz, S., Johnson, N. L. and Boyd, D. W. (1967a). Series representations of distributions of quadratic forms in normal variables. I. Central case. Ann. Math. Statist. 38 823--837.
• Kotz, S., Johnson, N. L. and Boyd, D. W. (1967b). Series representations of distributions of quadratic forms in normal variables. II. Non-central case. Ann. Math. Statist. 38 838--848.
• Kotz, S., Johnson, N. L. and Read, C. B., eds. (1982--1989). Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences 1--9, Suppl. Wiley, New York.
• Laird, N. (1989). A conversation with F. N. David. Statist. Sci. 4 235--246.
• Pearson, E. S., Johnson, N. L. and Burr, I. W. (1979). Comparisons of the percentage points of distributions with the same first four moments, chosen from eight different systems of frequency curves. Comm. Statist. Simulation Comput. 8 191--229.