Jane Worcester (died 8 October 1989)[1] was a biostatistician and epidemiologist who became the second tenured female professor, after Martha May Eliot, and the first female chair of biostatistics in the Harvard School of Public Health.[2][3]
Worcester graduated from Smith College in 1931, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and was hired by Harvard biostatistician Edwin B. Wilson to become a human computer at Harvard.[2][4]They continued to work together on theoretical research in biostatistics until Wilson retired as chair of the department in 1945,[2] eventually publishing 27 papers together.[1] Worcester completed a Ph.D. in epidemiology at Harvard under Wilson's supervision in 1947; her dissertation was The Epidemiology of Streptococcal and Non-Streptococcal Respiratory Disease.[5]She joined the Harvard faculty, was granted tenure in 1962,[3]and served as chair from 1973 to 1977, when she retired.[1][2][6]
She became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1960.[7] In 1968, Smith College awarded her an honorary doctorate.[4]