Alumni Memories

Essays on the College of Agriculture's History

Henry A. Wallace and the Statistical Laboratory

by H. A. David

H. A. David

Editor’s note: H. A. David served as a professor and department head of statistics and Director of the Statistics Lab from 1974-1984. David writes about his experiences at the Statistics Laboratory and the influence of Henry A. Wallace on statistics at Iowa State. David is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Science and Humanities.

In the Spring Quarter of 1924, Henry A. Wallace, then editor of “Wallace’s’ Farmer” in Des Moines, drove to Ames to give 10 Saturday afternoon lectures on the machine calculation and the interpretation of regression coefficients. The audience of about 20 consisted mainly of agricultural and biological research workers. Motivated by his interest in plant genetics, especially hybrid corn, Wallace, the top agricultural graduate at Iowa State College in 1910, felt strongly that Iowa State agricultural researchers needed to know of these powerful statistical techniques for interpreting their data.

Also in the audience was George Snedecor who had joined the Iowa State Mathematics Department in 1913 with a B.S. from the University of Alabama and an A.M. in Physics from Michigan. He had found faculty interested in the analysis of their experiments, with John M. Evvard from animal husbandry being a particularly strong supporter. Snedecor was ready to benefit from Wallace’s lectures and assisted with the preparation of an influential booklet “Correlation and Machine Calculation,” by Wallace and Snedecor. The bulletin was issued in 1925 as an official publication of Iowa State College and attained worldwide circulation. Wallace wrote the first draft, but Snedecor produced the second, enlarged 1931 edition. The latter included references to the great advances in agricultural experimentation due to R. A. Fisher, the importance of whose work Snedecor was one of the first in the United States to recognize. The 1925 publication was actually Snedecor’s first, at the age of 42, and evidently released his pen to write extensively, especially his phenomenally successful “Statistical Methods.”

In spite of his rise to Secretary of Agriculture, 1933-40, Vice President, 1940-44, and Secretary of Commerce 1945-56, Wallace remained proud of the early impetus he was able to give statistics at Iowa State. This resulted in 1933 in the formation of the Statistical Laboratory, the first unit of its kind in the United States, and a model for many other such laboratories.

In 1974, as Director of the Statlab, I marked the 50th anniversary of Wallace’s lectures by visiting Wallace’s son, Henry B., then a Vice-President of Pioneer High-Bred Seeds, the company founded by his father in 1926. I explained the great need we had for the new electronic desk calculators, then starting a revolution in computation, and the difficulty ISU had in funding these. Henry B. realized the appropriateness of my request and the Wallace Genetic Foundation funded 40 Monroe 900 electronic calculators for our main laboratory in Snedecor Hall. Henry B. was honored by a luncheon and the laboratory was officially designated the Henry A. Wallace Room. Soon after, the ISU administration similarly funded our second laboratory in Snedecor Hall.

In further recognition of Wallace’s early critical contribution and later support as Secretary of Agriculture, the Statistics Department is also launching, with University support, a prestigious biennial Henry A. Wallace Lecture Series.