As with so many others who have contributed much to our profession, Jack Youden began his career, not as a statistician, but rather in a related discipline, as a physical chemist. Born in Townsville, Australia, in 1900, Jack’s family came to America in 1907 and resided in Niagara Falls, NY, where Jack attended the local public schools. During Jack’s senior year of high school, the family moved to Rochester, NY, and the following year Jack enrolled at the University of Rochester. In 1921, Jack graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering having been elected to Phi Beta Kapра.
Following graduation Jack served a year as an instructor in chemistry at the University of Rochester and then enrolled at Columbia University as a graduate fellow in chemistry earning an M.A. in 1923 and a Ph.D. in 1924. Upon graduation, Jack joined the staff of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, located in Yonkers, NY, as a physical chemist. Thus, during the first third of his life, Jack showed an interest in and was formally trained in the field of chemistry.
The next seven years were a transition period in which Jack, a physical chemist, was slowly becoming more of a statistician. In 1931-32, Jack commuted from Yonkers to Morning Heights, NY to attend Professor H. Hotelling’s lectures on Statistical Inference at Columbia University. And, while Jack was now assuming the role of a statistician more in his work, his laboratory experience was always to remain a treasured asset enabling him to communicate with scientists on their own grounds.
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