Recipients of the I.W. Burr Award

The late Irving W. Burr served on the Purdue faculty from 1941 until his retirement in 1974. He was a leading expert in quality control and industrial statistics. He was well-known for his text Engineering Statistics and Quality Control (McGraw-Hill, 1953) and he was active as a consultant to business and industry. Professor Burr's scholarly work centered on statistical process control and distribution theory. The Burr distributions are named for him. He was elected a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Professor Burr was one of the faculty whose work and reputation helped transform Purdue from a regional college to a national research university.

This award was established in 1974 upon the retirement of Professor Burr, an eminent statistician who taught at Purdue for nearly 35 years. The criteria for this award are: (a) promise of contribution to the profession as evidenced by academic excellence in courses and exams, and by the quality of the thesis research, (b) and excellence in teaching or consulting as a graduate student at Purdue.