A Conversation with Gerry Hahn

ABSTRACT

Gerald (Gerry) John Hahn was born (as Gerhart Jost) in Karlsruhe, Germany, on September 11, 1930. He received a BBA in 1952 from the City College of New York (CCNY), MS degrees from Columbia University and Union College in 1953 and 1965, and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1971. He served in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps from 1953 to 1955. He joined the GE Company in 1955 and led its Applied Statistics Program from 1973 to his retirement in 2001. He has been on the adjunct faculties of RPI, Union College, and the University of Utah. He has coauthored three books (see references), contributed chapters to ten others, written over 100 papers in refereed journals and a regular column for Chemtech (1974–1988), coauthors (since 1999) yearly articles for Quality Progress, and has been the keynote speaker at various conferences. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and a member of the International Statistical Institute. He was the first chair of ASA's Quality and Productivity Committee and chaired its Committee on Fellows, ASQ's Brumbaugh Committee, and a Gordon Research Conference on Statistics. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Quality Technology, Six Sigma Forum Magazine, and Technometrics. He is the recipient of 16 major professional awards (see sidebar).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Necip Doganaksoy would like to thank Professor William Woodall for his inputs and guidance during the preparation of this article.