Martin Wilk

Martin Bradbury Wilk
Chief Statistician of Canada
In office 1980–1985
Preceded by	James L. Fry, interim
Succeeded by	Ivan Fellegi
Personal details
Born	18 December 1922 (1922-12-18) (age 88) Montreal, Quebec

Martin Bradbury Wilk, OC (born 18 December 1922) is a Canadian statistician, academic, and the former Chief Statistician of Canada. In 1965, together with Samuel Shapiro, he developed the Shapiro-Wilk test which can indicate whether a sample of numbers would be unusual if it came from a Gaussian distribution.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 1945. From 1945 to 1950, he was a Research Chemical Engineer on the Atomic Energy Project at the National Research Council of Canada. From 1951 to 1955, he was a Research Associate, Instructor, and Assistant Professor at Iowa State University, where he received a Master of Science in Statistics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in Statistics in 1955. From 1955 to 1957, he was a Research Associate and Assistant Director of the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University. From 1959 to 1963, he was a Professor and Director of Research in Statistics at Rutgers University.

In 1956, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories and in 1970 joined American Telephone and Telegraph Company. From 1976 to 1980, he was the Assistant Vice President-Director of Corporate Planning. From 1980 to 1985, he was the Chief Statistician of Canada.

In 1981, he was appointed an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Carleton University.

In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "insightful guidance on important matters related to our country's national statistical system".^[1]

References

• "Canadian Who's Who 1997 entry". http://www.utpress.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/cw2w3.cgi?p=whyard&t=60635&d=3109. Retrieved March 28, 2006. 
• "Martin Bradbury Wilk". Statistical Society of Canada. http://www.ssc.ca/main/about/history/wilk_e.html. Retrieved August 28, 2008. ^{[dead link]}

1. ^ Order of Canada citation

Persondata
Name	Wilk, Martin
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	18 December 1922
Place of birth	Montreal, Quebec
Date of death
Place of death