Title: H. Leon Harter Papers, 1950-2004
ID: 26/20/263
Primary Creator: H. Leon Harter (1919-2010)
Extent: 7.0 cubic feet
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.
Subjects: Mathematics, Statistics
Consists of academic articles, lecture notes and slides, drafts, correspondence, invoices, and photographs related to Harter's work as a statistician at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a professor at Wright State University and The Air Force Institute of Technology, and his continued research, writing, and consultation work after his retirement.
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.