Hettmansperger Retires after 41 Years of Service
1 October 2008 — Thomas Hettmansperger, professor emeritus of statistics at Penn State, has retired after 41 years of service to the University. His research involves the development and assessment of efficient and robust statistical methods for solving problems using the linear model, which includes analysis of variance and multiple regression and is the basis of most statistical analyses. Hettmansperger has focused most of his research effort on nonparametric rank tests and estimates. Nonparametric methods do not require distributional assumptions, such as normality for the sampled population. He has published two books in this area: "Statistical Inference Based on Ranks" (1984) and "Robust Nonparametric Statistical Methods" (1998) with a colleague, Joe McKean from Western Michigan University.
Another area of interest for Hettmansperger is mixture models, which are applicable when a population under study is actually a mixture of subpopulations. His collaboration with Hoben Thomas, a colleague in the Penn State Department of Psychology, has led to novel ways of thinking about cognitive development in children. In addition, Hettmansperger's research achievements include new ways to extend the idea of ranks to higher-dimensional data. His research in nonparametrics and mixture models has been supported continuously by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.
A hallmark of Hettmansperger's career is his dedication to undergraduate and graduate education. He taught courses in the theory and application of nonparametrics and robustness, mathematical statistics, and linear models. Over the years, he has supervised the research of 26 Ph.D. students. For his excellence in teaching, the Eberly College of Science honored him with the 1986 C. I. Noll Award for Teaching.
Hettmanperger is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and he is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. In 2004, he received the Noether Senior Scholar Award from the American Statistical Association for his work on nonparametric statistics. He has held visiting appointments at the University of California at Berkeley; Princeton University; the University of Washington; the University of Bern in Switzerland; the National University of Singapore; the Universities of Oulu, Tampere, and Jyvaskysla in Finland; and, in Australia, Latrobe University, the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the University of South Australia, the University of Tasmania, and the University of New South Wales.
Hettmansperger was an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Penn State from 1967 to 1972 and an associate professor from 1972 to 1978. He was named professor in 1978. From 1988 to 1990 he served as head of the statistics department. Hettmansperger earned a bachelor's degree at Indiana University in 1961 and master's and and Ph.D degrees at the University of Iowa in 1965 and 1967, respectively.
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CONTACTS
Thomas Hettmansperger: (+1) 814-865-2211, tph@psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (PIO): 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu
