Editing John Tukey (section)

== Biography ==
Tukey was born in [[New Bedford, Massachusetts]], in 1915, to a Latin teacher father and a private tutor. He was mainly taught by his mother and attended regular classes only for certain subjects like French.<ref name="Leonhardt_2000"/> Tukey obtained a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in 1936 and [[M.S.]] in 1937 in chemistry, from [[Brown University]], before moving to [[Princeton University]], where in 1939 he received a [[PhD]] in [[mathematics]] after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "On [[denumerability]] in [[topology]]".<ref name="math"/><ref>{{Cite book|last=Tukey|first=John W.|url=https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/2700812|title=On denumerability in topology|date=1939|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/John_Tukey |title=John Tukey |work=IEEE Global History Network |publisher=IEEE |access-date=2011-07-18}}</ref>

During [[World War II]], Tukey worked at the Fire Control Research Office and collaborated with [[Samuel S. Wilks|Samuel Wilks]] and [[William Gemmell Cochran|William Cochran]]. He is claimed to have helped design the U-2 spy plane. After the war, he returned to Princeton, dividing his time between the university and [[Bell Labs|AT&T Bell Laboratories]]. In 1962, Tukey was elected to the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=John+W.+Tukey&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-01-28|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> He became a full professor at 35 and founding chairman of the Princeton statistics department in 1965.<ref name="Leonhardt_2000"/>

Among many contributions to [[civil society]], Tukey served on a committee of the [[American Statistical Association]] that produced a report critiquing the statistical methodology of the [[Kinsey Reports|Kinsey Report]], ''Statistical Problems of the Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'', which summarized "A random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey".

From 1960 to 1980, Tukey helped design the NBC television network polls used to predict and analyze elections. He was also a consultant to the Educational Testing Service, the Xerox Corporation, and Merck & Company.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Tukey played a key role in the design and conduct of the [[National Assessment of Educational Progress]].

He was awarded the [[National Medal of Science]] by President Nixon in 1973.<ref name="Leonhardt_2000"/> He was awarded the [[IEEE Medal of Honor]] in 1982 "For his contributions to the spectral analysis of random processes and the [[fast Fourier transform]] (FFT) [[algorithm]]".

Tukey retired in 1985. He died in [[New Brunswick, New Jersey]], on July 26, 2000.