A conversation with Fred Ederer

Abstract

Fred Ederer was born on March 5, 1926, in Vienna, Austria. He received a B.S. degree in mathematics and science from the City College of New York, an M.A. degree in statistics from American University and did further graduate work in biostatistics at Columbia and Stanford Universities. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, of the American College of Epidemiology and of the American Heart Association's Council on Epidemiology. He has been on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, Survey of Ophthalmology and the American Journal of Epidemiology. He has served on the Council on Epidemiology, the American Heart Association and the Regional Advisory Board of the Eastern North American Region of the Biometric Society, and he was on the Founding Board of Directors for both the Society for Clinical Trials and the American College of Epidemiology. His tenure at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) included the years 1957 through 1986. He began at the National Cancer Institute, moving next to the National Heart Institute and then spending the next half of his NIH career at the National Eye Institute (NEI). His first position at NEI was as Head of the Section on Clinical Trials, then Chief of the Office of Biometry and Epidemiology and, finally, Associate Director for Biometry and Epidemiology. He was awarded the Superior Service Award, one of the highest civilian awards given at NIH. Since leaving NIH, he has been Senior Epidemiologist at the EMMES Corporation and Adjunct Professor in the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota.