John Tukey  John Wilder Tukey (; June 16, 1915 – July 26, 2000) was an American mathematician best known for development of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name. He is also credited with coining the term 'bit'. Tukey was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1915 to a Latin teacher father and a private tutor mother. He was mainly taught by his mother and only went to regular classes for special subjects like French. Tukey obtained a B.A. in 1936 and M.Sc. in 1937, in chemistry, from Brown University, before moving to Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in mathematics after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "On denumerability in topology." During World War II, Tukey worked at the Fire Control Research Office and collaborated with Samuel Wilks and William Cochran. He is claimed to have helped design the U-2 spy plane. After the war, he returned to Princeton, dividing his time between the university and AT&T Bell Laboratories. He became a full professor at 35 and founding chairman of the Princeton statistics department in 1965. Among many contributions to civil society, Tukey served on a committee of the American Statistical Association that produced a report challenging the conclusions of the Kinsey Report, "Statistical Problems of the Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male". From 1960 to 1980, Tukey helped design the NBC television network polls used to predict and analyze elections. He was also a consultant to the Educational Testing Service, the Xerox Corporation and Merck & Company. He was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Nixon in 1973. He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1982 "For his contributions to the spectral analysis of random processes and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm". Tukey retired in 1985. He died in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on July 26, 2000. Early in his career Tukey worked on developing statistical methods for computers at Bell Labs where he invented the term "bit" in 1947. His statistical interests were many and varied. He is particularly remembered for his development with James Cooley of the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm. In 1970, he contributed significantly to what is today known as the jackknife estimation—also termed Quenouille–Tukey jackknife.