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ASA Member Obituaries

William F. Taylor

A memorial service for William Francis Taylor, who died on December 30, was held at noon on Tuesday, January 6, at the Unitarian Church in Rochester, Minnesota.

William F. (Bill) Taylor was born on October 14, 1921, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1943. He was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force from 1943 - 1946, serving as a meteorologist in the Central Pacific and on Okinawa. Following military service, he returned to UC Berkeley to earn a PhD in statistics in 1951. From 1951 to 1958 he was chief of the Department of Biometrics at Randolph Air Force Base. From 1958 to 1967 he was on the faculty of the Department of Biostatistics at UC Berkeley where he rose to the level of Professor. In 1967 he joined the Mayo Clinic staff as a Professor and Consultant in Biostatistics. He served as head of the Section of Medical Research Statistics from 1967 to 1975, founding the Cancer Center Statistics Unit. He chaired Mayo's Cancer Patient Data System Committee until he retired from Mayo in 1986.

Bill's research interests were primarily in public health and medical statistics. They included fetal and neonatal mortality, estimation and testing in contingency tables, and vital statistics and their analysis. At Mayo he was particularly influential in the Mayo Lung Project, the design of clinical trials in cancer research, survival analysis, cancer detection screening methods, research quality control, and the identification of prognostic factors in osteosarcoma. His bibliography includes more than 125 publications. He was active in several professional associations and received many honors. He was a fellow of the American Public Health Association and the American Statistical Association.

Bill had a high regard for teaching, student work, and academics in general. He played a key role in bringing graduate students and eventually undergraduates to Mayo from academic institutions in the US and abroad. He took great pride and pleasure in working with students and watching them grow into mature researchers. He worked hard to facilitate arrangements for continued learning.

In 1943, Bill married his childhood sweetheart, Lois McIntosh. They reared three children and were married 36 years until her death in 1979. In 1981 he married Judith Keller, the head librarian at the Rochester Public Library, who survives. They had 28 years of time together, enjoying the grandchildren (his and hers) and travelling extensively. Bill enjoyed ice cream, especially his "home made" variety, which he shared generously with his family and colleagues. A multi-sport letter winner in high school, Bill loved all sports but baseball was his true love. He coached many youth teams in California and Minnesota and would discuss the strategy of the game with anyone interested. He was an active member of the Rochester Rotary Club for many years and was named a Paul Harris Fellow for his many contributions to the goals of Rotary International.

Bill's families, his many Mayo friends and colleagues, his friends in the Unitarian Fellowship, his fellow Rotarians, and his friends from the community mourn his passing and celebrate his friendship.

W. M. "Mike" O'Fallon