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Through Time series, Design of experiments and Chemistry
Education and early life
He was born in Gravesend, Kent, England. Upon entering university he began to study chemistry, but was called up for service before finishing. During World War II, he performed experiments for the British Army exposing small animals to poison gas. To analyze the results of his experiments, he taught himself statistics from available texts. After the war, he enrolled at University College London and obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics. He received a PhD from the University of London in 1953, under the supervision of Egon Pearson and HO Hartley.
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Career and research
From 1948 to 1956, Box worked as a statistician for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). While at ICI, he took a leave of absence for a year and served as a visiting professor at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. He later went to Princeton University where he served as Director of the Statistical Research Group.
In 1960, Box moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison to create the Department of Statistics. In 1980, he was named Vilas Research Professor of Statistics, which is the highest honor given to a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty. Box and Bill Hunter co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985. Box officially retired in 1992, becoming an emeritus professor.
Box published books including Statistics for Experimenters (2nd ed., 2005), Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control (4th ed., 2008, with Gwilym Jenkins and Gregory C. Reinsel) and Bayesian Inference in Statistical Analysis. (1973, with George C. Tiao).
Personal life
Box was married three times. In 1945, he married Jessie Ward, a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. The two later divorced. He then married Joan Fisher, daughter of the British statistician Ronald Fisher. The two later collaborated on a biography of Ronald Fisher, published in 1978. After Fisher and Box divorced, he married Claire Louise Quist in 1985.
Box died on 28 March 2013. He was 93 years old.