In honor of Math and Statistics Awareness Month, we’re looking back on luminaries from the last century-plus whose excellence helped establish Cornell University as a leader in mathematical and statistical discovery.
Walter Willcox
Professor of Economics
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
1891 – 1931
Walter Willcox was the first professor of statistics in the United States, teaching at Cornell from 1891 to 1931. In 1892, he launched the first statistics course ever taught at Cornell – and one of the first anywhere – an “elementary source in statistical methods with special treatment of vital and moral statistics.” From 1902 to 1907, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Willcox’s impact was far from limited to the Cornell campus. He was a foremost statistician with national and international impact: He served as chief statistician of the 12th Census of the United States in 1899, was president of the American Statistical Association in 1912, and was instrumental in bringing in the U.S. as a member to the International Statistical Institute. He served as U.S. delegate to the Institute’s biennial meetings and helped revive it after World War II, serving as president at its first post-war meeting. He authored four books and was a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and an honorary member of several other statistical societies. In his book, “Studies in American Demography,” Willcox wrote: “I have long agreed with recent statements that ‘except for statistics … no new technique for studying social problems has been developed in modern times’ and that ‘it is principally by the aid of such methods that these studies may be raised to the rank of sciences.’” He died in 1964 at the age of 103.
Ida Martha Metcalf
M.S. Mathematics 1889
Ph.D. Mathematics 1893
Ida Metcalf received her master’s and Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell, becoming the second American woman ever to receive a Ph.D. in the field, with a dissertation titled “Geometric Duality in Space.” At Cornell, she helped George William Jones, professor of mathematics, in writing his textbook, “A Drill-book in Algebra.” She began teaching as a teenager and taught at several schools before and after her time at Cornell. In 1910, at 54, she started a new career as a civil service examiner in New York City – the first woman appointed to the post. In 1912, she became a statistician for New York City’s Department of Finance and continued teaching, tutoring students in mathematics and Latin in her off hours. She was an outspoken proponent of women’s rights, having witnessed firsthand that merit and ability got women mathematicians only so far in the male-dominated profession. Despite holding three college degrees, having taught for most of her life, and working as a statistician, Metcalf was prevented from taking the examination for statistician in the New York Education Department on the grounds that she did not have sufficient experience. She remained in the city’s Department of Finance until her retirement in 1921, but continued to work as a civil service examiner until 1939.
