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16 A brief history of COPSS1.4.3 George W. Snedecor AwardEstablished in 1976, this award honors George W. Snedecor who was instrumentalin the development of statistical theory in biometry. It recognizes anoteworthy publication in biometry appearing within three years of the dateof the award. Since 1991 it has been given every other year in odd years.George W. Snedecor was born on October 20, 1881, in Memphis, TN,and was educated at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, the University of Alabama,and the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of Iowa StateCollege (University) in 1913 and taught there for 45 years. In 1924, he andhis colleague Henry Wallace (who became Secretary of Agriculture, 1933–40,33rd Vice President of the United States, 1941–45, and Secretary of Commerce,1945–46) organized a seminar to study regression and data analysis.He formed the Iowa State Statistics Laboratory in 1933 and served as Director.His book Statistical Methods was published in 1937, and later, with WilliamG. Cochran as co-author, went through seven editions. Iowa State’s Departmentof Statistics separated from the Mathematics Department in 1939; itoffered a Master’s in statistics, the first of which was given to Gertrude Cox.The F distribution, which is central to the analysis of variance, was obtainedby Snedecor and called F after Fisher. Snedecor served as president ofthe American Statistical Association in 1948, was named an Honorary Fellowof the Royal Statistical Society in 1954, and received an honorary Doctorateof Science from North Carolina State University in 1956. Further detailsabout Snedecor are contained in “Tales of Statisticians” and “Statisticians inHistory” (Amstat News, September2009,pp.10–11).The recipients of the George W. Snedecor Award are listed in Table 1.5,along with references for the awarded publications.TABLE 1.5Recipients of the George W. Snedecor Award and publication(s).1977 A. Philip DawidProperties of diagnostic data distribution.Biometrics, 32:647–658.1978 Bruce W. Turnbull and Toby J. MitchellExploratory analysis of disease prevalence data from survival/sacrifice experiments.Biometrics, 34:555–570.1979 Ethel S. GilbertThe assessment of risks from occupational exposure to ionizingradiation. In Energy and Health, SIAM–SIMSConferenceSeriesNo. 6 (N. Breslow, Ed.), SIAM, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 209–225.1981 Barry H. Margolin, Norman Kaplan, and Errol ZeigerStatistical analysis of the Ames salmonella/microsome test.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 78:3779–3783.