Nan McKenzie Laird (born September 18, 1943) is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of Public Health, Emerita in Biostatistics at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

. She served as Chair of the Department from 1990 to 1999. She was the Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Biostatistics from 1991 to 1999. Laird is a Fellow 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 ...

, as well as the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

. She is a member of the International Statistical Institute.

Education

Laird began her undergraduate studies at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

in 1961, first majoring in mathematics, before switching to French. She left Rice in her junior year in college and moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Later, she resumed studies at

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

in computer science before eventually switching to statistics and earned her BA in 1969. Laird worked between 1969 and 1971 as a computer programmer on the Apollo program at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Draper Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc (sometimes abbreviated as CSDL). The laboratory specialize ...

before starting her graduate studies at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in statistics in 1971. She received her PhD from Harvard in 1975 under Arthur Dempster and was hired as a faculty member directly after graduation. She remained at Harvard until her retirement, when she became an

emeritus professor ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Career and research

Laird is well known for many seminal papers in biostatistics applications and methods, including the Expectation-maximization algorithm.

Selected publications

* * Laird NM and Ware, JH. (1982) "Random effects models for longitudinal data: an overview of recent results". ''Biometrics'',
38:963-974
*

Honors and awards

Her honors include the third International Prize in Statistics in 2021, the 25th Annual Distinguished Statistician Lecture from the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...

, the

and

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in 2016, the 25th Annual Lowell Reed Lecturer, from the American Public Health Association in 2011, the Samuel S. Wilks Award, from the

in 2011, the Myra Samuels Lecturer award from

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

in 2004, the Janet L. Norwood Award in 2003 from the

, the

Florence Nightingale David Award The Florence Nightingale David Award is an award given every two years (in odd-numbered years) jointly by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies and Caucus for Women in Statistics to a distinguished female statistician. Description ...

in 2001 from the

Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) comprises the presidents, past presidents and presidents-elect of the following, primarily Northern American, professional societies of statisticians: * American Statistical Association * ...

, and several other fellowships.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laird, Nan 1943 births Living people American statisticians 20th-century American mathematicians Women statisticians Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Rice University alumni University of Georgia alumni Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute 20th-century women mathematicians Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science People from Gainesville, Florida Massachusetts Institute of Technology people