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William Henry Kruskal was an American mathematician and statistician. He is best known for having formulated the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance, a widely used nonparametric statistical method.
Kruskal was born in New York City to a successful fur wholesaler. His mother, Lillian Rose Vorhaus Kruskal Oppenheimer, became a noted promoter of Origami during the early era of television. He was the oldest of five children, three of whom, including himself, became researchers in mathematics and physics; see Joseph Kruskal and Martin Kruskal. Kruskal left Antioch College to attend Harvard University, receiving Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics in 1940 and 1941. He pursued a Ph. D. in Mathematical Sciences at Columbia University, graduating in 1955.
During the Second World War, Kruskal served at the U.S. Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. After brief stints working for his father and lecturing at Columbia, he joined the University of Chicago faculty as an instructor in statistics in 1950. He edited the Annals of Mathematical Statistics from 1958 to 1961, served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1971, and of the American Statistical Association in 1982. Kruskal retired as Professor Emeritus in 1990. He died in Chicago.
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