Gertrude Mary Cox

Gertrude Mary Cox (January 13, 1900 – October 17 1978) was an influential American statistican and founder of the department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University. She was later appointed director of both the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of North Carolina State University. Her most important and influential research dealt with experimental design; she wrote an important book on the subject with W. G. Cochran.

In 1949 Cox became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute and in 1956 she was president of the American Statistical Association.

Gertrude Cox was born in Dayton, Iowa on January 13 1900. Cox graduated from Iowa State College with a B.S. degree in Mathematics and received her Masters degree in statistics in 1931 from Iowa State.