William Manning Haenszel (June 19, 1910 – March 13, 1998) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

epidemiologist who developed the first national system to track cancer cases and their possible causes (

Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is a source of epidemiologic information on the incidence and survival rates of cancer in the United States. The Program SEER collects and pub ...

or SEER). He was an elected 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 ...

, the American Public Health Association, and the American Association For the Advancement of Science. He worked at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

from 1952 to 1976, when he became a Professor of Epidemiology at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

. With Nathan Mantel, he co-authored the Mantel–Haenszel statistical test for omitted variables.

Early life and education

Haenszel was born on June 19, 1910, in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

. He received his B.A. in sociology and mathematics from the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 18 ...

in 1931 and his M.A. in statistics there in 1932.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Haenszel, William M. 1910 births University at Buffalo alumni 1998 deaths Cancer epidemiologists Fellows of the American Statistical Association American statisticians University of Illinois faculty Physicians from Rochester, New York Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Mathematicians from New York (state)