Mary Ellen Bock

{{short description|American statistician}}

{{Infobox scientist

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| name = Mary Ellen Bock

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| native_name = Mary Ellen Johnston Bock

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| fields = Statistics

| workplaces = Purdue University

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| alma_mater = University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

| thesis_title = Certain Minimax Estimators of the Mean of a Multivariate Normal Distribution

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| thesis_year = 1974

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Mary Ellen Johnston Bock is a retired American statistician, now a professor emeritus at Purdue University{{r|profile}}

after becoming the first female full professor of statistics and the first female chair of the department there.{{r|sin}}

She was president of the American Statistical Association in 2007.{{r|aws}}

Education and career

As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Bock earned a bachelor's degree in the German language in 1967.{{r|profile}} She switched to mathematics for her graduate studies at the same university, completing her PhD in 1974 under the supervision of Robert B. Ash with a dissertation on Certain Minimax Estimators of the Mean of a Multivariate Normal Distribution.{{r|profile|mgp}}{{cite journal |author = M. E. Bock |title=Minimax Estimators of the Mean of a Multivariate Normal Distribution |journal=Ann. Statist. |date=January 1975 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=209–218 |doi=10.1214/aos/1176343009 |doi-access=free }}

As chair of statistics at Purdue from 1995 to 2010, Bock led the department through a period of growth, and took a multidisciplinary approach to the subject that included computational statistics as well as application areas including biostatistics, statistical finance, and environmental statistics.{{r|sin}}

Awards and honors

Bock is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,{{r|profile}} and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.{{r|fims}} She won the Founders Award of the American Statistical Association in 2013.{{r|profile}}

References

{{reflist|refs=

{{citation|title=Advancing Women in Science: An International Perspective|editor1-first=Willie|editor1-last=Pearson|editor2-first=Lisa M.|editor2-last=Frehill|editor3-first=Connie L.|editor3-last=McNeely|publisher=Springer|year=2015|isbn=9783319086293|page=209|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wb6pCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA209}}

{{citation|url=https://www.imstat.org/honored-ims-fellows/|title=Honored Fellows|publisher=Institute of Mathematical Statistics|accessdate=2018-10-27}}

{{mathgenealogy|id=3930}}

{{citation|url=http://www.stat.purdue.edu/people/faculty/mbock|title=Mary Ellen Bock|work=Faculty Directory|publisher=Purdue University Department of Statistics|accessdate=2017-10-14}}

{{citation|title=Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U. S.|editor1-first=Alan|editor1-last=Agresti|editor2-first=Xiao-Li|editor2-last=Meng|publisher=Springer|year=2012|isbn=9781461436492|contribution=Purdue Statistics: A Journey Through Time|first1=Sanvesh|last1=Srivastava|first2=Rebecca W.|last2=Doerge|author2-link= Rebecca Doerge |pages=229–242|doi=10.1007/978-1-4614-3649-2_17}}. See in particular [https://books.google.com/books?id=kPGJUiUCJZkC&pg=PA235 "Mary Ellen Bock's Era: Adapting to the Changing Times (1995–2010)"], pp. 235–238.

}}

{{American Statistical Association Presidents}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bock, Mary Ellen}}

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Living people

Category:American statisticians

Category:American women statisticians

Category:Purdue University faculty

Category:Fellows of the American Statistical Association

Category:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Category:Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Category:University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni

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