Judith M. Tanur is an American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may w ...

and sociologist who is Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita of Sociology at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

.Faculty profile

, retrieved 2016-09-24. Judith Tanur was born to Edward Mark and Libbie Berman Mark on August 12, 1935 in Jersey City, New Jersey. When Tanur was young, her family moved from

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

, where she was born, to

Great Neck, New York Great Neck is a region on Long Island, New York, that covers a peninsula on the North Shore and includes nine villages, among them Great Neck, Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Plaza, Kings Point, and Russell Gardens, and a number of unincorpo ...

. She graduated from Great Neck High School in 1953 and entered

Antioch College Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its ...

, studying psychology and statistics there, but in 1955 she transferred to

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, in part because it was closer to the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

where her future husband was studying dentistry. At the same time, she took a job at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Tanur completed a bachelor's degree in

psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

in 1957 and began graduate studies at Penn, but became pregnant and dropped out. Eventually, she returned to graduate school, completed a master's degree in

mathematical statistics Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical an ...

from

in 1963, and took a new job as an editor for

William Kruskal William Henry Kruskal (; October 10, 1919 – April 21, 2005) was an American mathematician and statistician. He is best known for having formulated the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance (together with W. Allen Wallis), a widely use ...

at the ''International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences''. She became a lecturer at Stony Brook in 1968, still only holding a master's degree,. and later completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Stony Brook. With S. James Press, she is the author of ''The Subjectivity of Scientists and the Bayesian Approach'' (Wiley, 2001; Dover, 2016). In 1980 she was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

.View/Search Fellows of the ASA
accessed 2016-09-24. She is also a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, a winner of the Founder's Award of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

, and the 2006 winner of the Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tanur, Judith M. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American sociologists American women statisticians American women sociologists Columbia University alumni Stony Brook University alumni Stony Brook University faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 21st-century American women