Arrangement
The collection is arranged into five series: Series 1: Research; Series 2: Requests for Publications and General Correspondence; Series 3: Reviews and Refereed Papers; Series 4: Teaching Materials; and Series 5: Employment Records. Original folder titles were kept where possible, except when there was no original folder title or where the original title did not adequately describe its contents. Many of the folders in Series 1 are titled after one of Harter's papers, and contain all information related to that paper regardless of date, including notes, correspondence, and drafts.
Biographical Note
H. Leon Harter graduated from the University of Illinois with his master's degree in mathematics, with a minor in physics. After serving in the Navy from 1944-1946, he earned his Ph.D in mathematics from Purdue and eventually accepted a position at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a mathematical statistician, where he produced a significant body of research on order statistics. He remained at Wright-Patterson until 1978, when he accepted a teaching position at Wright State University, where he taught for 5 years. He also taught classes for the Air Force Institute of Technology in the early 1980s, before retiring in 1984 and dedicating himself to consultant work and writing on order statistics.
Sources:
News Gazette Obituary for H. Leon Harter: https://www.news-gazette.com/obituaries/archive/leon-harter/article_b4e01c6c-a323-557e-a132-d35d52037aee.html