George Waddel Snedecor, the oldest of eight children, was born in October of 1881 and grew up in Tennessee. He was the son of a lawyer turned minister and lived primarily in small rural towns. He eventually earned two degrees, one in mathematics and the other in physics. He received his education at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, the University of Alabama, and the University of Michigan. In 1913 he came to Iowa State College (now called Iowa University, ISU) where he was quickly promoted and began teaching the first formal statistics course. He taught at Iowa for 45 years.
In 1924, Snedecor and his colleague Henry A. Wallace set up Saturday seminars to instruct people with problems in statistical applications. These weekly seminars led to the ISU bulletin, Correlation and Machine Calculations, by Snedecor and Wallace (1925). Snedecor’s enthusiasm for statistics and his commitment to research helped establish the Mathematics Statistical Service in the Department of Mathematics. He and Dr. A.E. Brandt provided this service to give campus-wide statistical consultation and professional help in statistics. This service eventually became the Statistical Laboratory, organized in 1933 with Snedecor as the first director. The professional statistical service was rare among universities and consequently attracted prominent statisticians to lecture or just visit. Some of those statisticians were R.A. Fisher, C.P. Winsor, and W.G. Cochran.
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