A conversation with Ralph A. Bradley

Abstract

Ralph A. Bradley was born in Smith Falls, Ontario, Canada on Nvember 28, 1923, but grew up in the village of Wellington on the shores of Lake Ontario. He graduated from Queen’s University in 1944 with an honors degree in mathematics and physics, was in the Canadian Army, 1944–1945 and returned to Queen's to complete an M.A. degree in 1946. In 1946 he entered the then new doctoral program in theoretical statistics at the University of Nrth Carolina and received the Ph.D. degree in June, 1949. His first academic position was at McGill University, 1949–1950, followed by nine years at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1950–1958. Bradley moved to Florida State University in 1959 to found a Department of Statistics there, heading the department until 1978, with the exception of ten months in Egypt in 1966 as a consultant to the Ford Foundation and the Institute of Statistical Studies and Research of the University of Cairo. He moved to the University of Georgia as Research Professor of Statistics in 1982. Although he retired in 1992, he continues to participate in activities in statistics there. He has been named Professor Emeritus at both Florida State and Georgia Universities.

Bradley has played a leadership role in the professional societies. He was Editor of Biometrics, 1957–1962, and Vice­President and President of the Eastern North American Region (1963–1965). He served as Vice­President (1975–1978) and President (1981) of the American Statistical Association (ASA). He headed (with Margaret E. Martin) the Coordinating Committee of the ASA Building and Development Fund (1982–1988) and was a member of the Future Goals Committee (1980). He has also served on various committees of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, been active in the International Statistical Institute, the Gordon Research Conferences, the Southern Regional Committee on Statistics, and the Ntional Institute of Statistical Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of Biometrics, the Journal of Statistical Computing and Simulation, and Communications in Statistics­Theory and Methods and acted as an editorial advisor on the Wiley Series on Probability and Statistics (1954--1998).

Bradley has been active in research throughout his career. He has over 110 research papers in such areas as design of experiments, non­ parametric statistics, methodology for sensory evaluations, sequential analysis, multivariate analysis, probability theory and computing tech­ niques. Most of his papers stemmed from his statistical consulting on applied problems, or from the need to develop new theory to solve such problems. Bradley's consulting with General Foods on statistical methods in product evaluation was particularly influential in stimulating his own research and the research of others.