Mary Gibbons Natrella
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mary Gibbons Natrella (September 23, 1922 – May 18, 1988)[1][2][3][4] was an American statistician and "an expert on the application of modern statistical techniques in physical science experimentation and engineering testing".[5] She worked at the National Bureau of Standards, where she wrote their Handbook 91, Experimental Statistics (1963).[6][7] It became one of their "all-time best selling publications"[8] and has been recognized as "a monumental work" with "deep and long-lasting impact on the application of statistics to the planning and analysis of scientific experiments".[9]
Mary Blanche Gibbons was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After earlier studies at Keystone College, she completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. She worked as a mathematician for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department from 1942 to 1945, and as a statistician for the Navy beginning in 1945.[2] In 1946, she married Joseph Victor Natrella, a mathematician for the Air Force who later worked for NASA.[2][4] In 1950, she moved from the Navy to the National Bureau of Standards,[2] where she remained until retiring in 1986.[5]
