Rita Zemach

Rita B. Zemach (née Dresner, April 3, 1926 – June 8, 2015)[1][2] was an American statistician who worked for the Michigan Department of Public Health, and helped promote women in statistics.[3]

Rita B. Zemach
Born
Rita Dresner

(1926-04-03)April 3, 1926
DiedJune 8, 2015(2015-06-08) (aged 89)
NationalityAmerican
EducationBarnard College
Alma materMichigan State University
Scientific career
FieldsStatistics
InstitutionsMichigan Department of Public Health
ThesisOn Orthogonal Arrays of Strength Four and Their Applications (1965)
Doctoral advisor Esther Seiden

Early life and education

Rita Dresner started her undergraduate studies at New York University, but transferred to Barnard College in her junior year. At Barnard, she became a member of the editorial staff of the Barnard Bulletin, the school newspaper.[4] She graduated from Barnard in 1947.[5][6]

Statistics career

As Rita Zemach, she became an elected member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1961,[6] and earned her Ph.D. in statistics in 1965 from Michigan State University.[7] Her dissertation, supervised by Esther Seiden,[3] was On Orthogonal Arrays of Strength Four and Their Applications.[8] She later published this work, "the first significant progress on orthogonal arrays of strength 4", with Seiden in the Annals of Mathematical Statistics.[9]

Her later research concerned more applied areas of statistics, in health and resource allocation. By 1979, she had become chief of statistics research and education for the Michigan Department of Public Health.[10]

Recognition

Zemach was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1987.[11]

References
  1. "Rita B. Dresner Zemach (1926–2015)", Find A Grave, retrieved November 13, 2017
  2. "Rita Zemach", Paid death notices, The New York Times, July 5, 2015
  3. Samuel-Cahn, Ester (1992), "A conversation with Esther Seiden", Statistical Science, 7 (3): 339–357, doi:10.1214/ss/1177011231, JSTOR 2246071, MR 1181416
  4. Barnard Bulletin, March 24, 1947
  5. The 1948 Mortarboard in a World of Women, Barnard College, 1947, p. 124
  6. "News and Notices", The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 32 (1): 344–355, March 1961, doi:10.1214/aoms/1177705167, JSTOR 2237634
  7. Alumni, Michigan State University Department of Statistics and Probability, retrieved November 13, 2017
  8. On Orthogonal Arrays of Strength Four and Their Applications, MR2615017
  9. J. Kiefer, review of "On orthogonal arrays" by Esther Seiden and Rita Zemach (Ann. Math. Stat. 1966), MR0196877. For the reviewed paper, see doi:10.1214/aoms/1177699280.
  10. "Class Notes", Barnard Alumnae, Barnard College, vol. 68, no. 3, p. 29, Spring 1979
  11. ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, retrieved November 12, 2017
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