From left: Frederick Mosteller, Stuart Rice, and Morris Hansen during the ASA’s 125th anniversary celebration in Boston, Massachusetts, in November of 1964

After the Census

Hansen retired from the Census Bureau in 1968 and went to work for Westat, Inc. on survey designs. He was chair of the board at Westat and also worked as statistical advisor and senior vice president. It was there that he helped redesign the sampling and estimation for the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Hansen’s accomplishments were numerous, as were his awards. He was the first president of the International Association of Survey Statisticians, an honorary member of the International Statistical Institute, and an honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He was Fellow and president of both the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1953 and the American Statistical Association in 1960. He served on many advisory committees in both the United States and abroad and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wyoming.

Hansen died on October 9, 1990, at the age of 79. In his memoriam for The American Statistician, Waksberg and another of Hansen’s colleagues, Benjamin Tepping, wrote that he was a “major influence in the direction of their professional careers.” They also wrote, “His keen intelligence, his ability to recognize and focus on the important elements of a problem, his strong drive and leadership qualities, and his incredible capacity for hard work made it a pleasure to work with him.”

After his death, Hansen’s colleagues at Westat asked the Washington Statistical Society to develop an ongoing lecture series in his honor. Click here for more information about the series. Additionally, for more information about Hansen’s life and work, click here (PDF).