Interview with Grace Wahba

Partial Transcript: Today is Friday, April 6, 2007. My name is Sandy Pfahler...

Segment Synopsis: Grace Wahba was born in Washington, D.C., in 1934. She talks about her parents: her father was a patent attorney and her mother held a B.A. Her father had aspired to be a chemist.

Partial Transcript: Did you have brothers and sisters?...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about her siblings.

Partial Transcript: Where did you go to elementary school?

Segment Synopsis: During the Second World War her family moved to New York. She attended high school in Montclair, New Jersey.

Keywords: Jamaica, New York; Virginia; moving

Partial Transcript: So I was...he used to come home and tell me about his work...

Segment Synopsis: GW recalls being entertained by her father’s stories about laboratory discoveries.

Keywords: patenting; tranquilizers

Partial Transcript: Now the high school that you went to that was a public high school?

Segment Synopsis: She describes her high school education. Mentions her family was one of the only Jewish families in Upper Montclair. Classes were segregated. She includes an anecdote about being the only female in her physics class.

Keywords: Montclair; math; segregation

Partial Transcript: How did you decide where to go to college?...

Segment Synopsis: GW attended Cornell and majored in math. Only woman in the engineering school.

Keywords: Cornell University; civil engineering; sexism

Partial Transcript: So, what happened then?

Segment Synopsis: She talks about some of her professors, including Professor Kac and Professor Rosser.

Keywords: Annetta Rosser; Hilldale Lectures; J. Barkley Rosser; Mark Kac

Partial Transcript: So you graduated with a degree?...

Segment Synopsis: GW graduated from Cornell and had her first child. She moved with her husband back to Washington, D.C., where her husband had a postdoc at NIH. Comments on the math background of American students compared to international students.

Keywords: Cornell; graduation

Partial Transcript: So what did you do then?...

Segment Synopsis: Wahba recounts wanting to take a graduate course, but her husband opposed. She took a job teaching remedial math at Maryland. Then she began to work at Operations Research Incorporated as a human computer. Mentored by Ritz (Robert R. Haier?)

Keywords: University of Maryland; human computer; junior engineer; teaching

Partial Transcript: I studied operations research on the side and I started back to University of Maryland...

Segment Synopsis: GW pursued graduate study at Maryland and completed a master’s thesis. Mentions different mentors. She was also in the process of divorcing her husband. She began looking for another job when she found out a co-worker was passing of her ideas as his own.

Partial Transcript: Alright so I went to work for IBM

Segment Synopsis: She then worked for IBM, where she first encountered computers. Hung out with "oddballs"

Keywords: IBM; racism

Partial Transcript: But our life at IBM was good and I had a lucky break then...

Segment Synopsis: IBM transferred her to California with twelve of her colleagues. Reconnected with her friend Priscilla.

Keywords: Almaden; California; Palo Alto; divorce; transfer

Partial Transcript: And I had an opportunity to go to Stanford to get to get a Ph.D. on the work study program...

Segment Synopsis: She pursued a PhD at Stanford in a work-study program; IBM paid her tuition.

Keywords: IBM; Stanford University; work study

Partial Transcript: And I had a, I had a piece...I did a very interesting piece of work while I was at IBM...

Segment Synopsis: GW discusses her work with an instrument that measured solar wind.

Keywords: John Wolfe; Pioneer 9; data analysis; solar wind

Partial Transcript: Well later on... so that work didn't get published for awhile...

Segment Synopsis: She completed her PhD in 1966 and then began a postdoc at Stanford. She was not credited when the work on the anisotropy of solar wind was published.

Keywords: American Geophysical Union; postdoc

Partial Transcript: So is that what made you decide that you wanted to stay in academic life?...

Segment Synopsis: GW received many job offers including from Lockheed and Purdue. George Box of the statistics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hired her in 1967.

Keywords: George Box; Manny Parsons; UW Madison; statistics

Partial Transcript: Well what was it like when you started?...

Segment Synopsis: She relates an anecdote about being invited to a poker game by her male colleagues.

Keywords: poker

Partial Transcript: So there were other things that were different in being a woman...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about Box’s English manners.

Keywords: manners; senior lady

Partial Transcript: Well talk about your research...

Segment Synopsis: GW discusses her research in the early 1970s.

Keywords: UNIVAC; computing center

Partial Transcript: So lets see, think of anecdote of that time for you...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about the Math Research Center. At the time the center had a lot of money for visiting researchers.

Keywords: George Kimeldorf; Math Research Center; punch card

Segment Synopsis: Grace Wahba discusses her 1971 paper on optimization problems. Wahba thinks this paper is probably her most quoted.

Keywords: Gene Golub; RKHS; cross-validation; optimization; reproducing kernel Hilbert space; support vector machine

Partial Transcript: And then there's something called spline ANOVA models, which I did in the late 80s in conjunction with several students...

GW recalls collaborating on a paper with colleagues while they were on a train in Europe.

Keywords: Gene Golub; Klosters; Switzerland; Yi Lin; generalized cross-validation

Partial Transcript: Talk about the tenure process. Did you have problems with the tenure process?...

Segment Synopsis: She describes her tenure process. Comments on present tenure processes and mentor committees.

Keywords: mentor committees; tenure

Partial Transcript: Do you enjoy teaching?...

Segment Synopsis: GW taught introductory statistics and time series.

Keywords: George Box; kernel hilbert spaces; statistics; teaching; time series

Partial Transcript: In those heady days they let us generate new classes easily and I generated syllabus for two classes that are on the books today...

Segment Synopsis: She also created two new statistics courses. Describes the course content.

Keywords: curriculum; statistics

Partial Transcript: I haven't taught 224 for awhile because somewhere along the line I started being very good at getting grants...

Segment Synopsis: Grants from NIH and NSF pay her salary and reduce her teaching load. Discusses teaching loads in the department. Notes that grants in meteorology "dried up" which stymied her work with the meteorology department.

Keywords: grants; teaching load

Partial Transcript: Can you pick and choose pretty much then?

Segment Synopsis: She talks about her collaboration with colleagues on campus. Beaver Dam Eye Study.

Keywords: Barbara Klein; Donald R. Johnson; meteorology; opthalmology

Partial Transcript: Would you talk about your work with the graduate students?...

Segment Synopsis: GW describes some of her graduate students. She also comments on the choices made by some of her female students with husbands.

Keywords: Mark Yang; Nira Dyn; Wing Hung Wong; compromise

Partial Transcript: What is the national and international reputation of the statistics department

Segment Synopsis: She evaluates the national reputation of the statistics department. Comments on the inequality in benefit plans for employees with domestic partners in comparison to married employees.

Keywords: health benefits; inequality; ranking; reputation; statistics department

Partial Transcript: We'll jump a little bit here. You mentioned earlier that you were on a divisional committee...

Segment Synopsis: Early in her career GW served on the Space and Remodeling Policy Committee.
She describes her service on other committees. She never stood for department chair. She mentions not feeling suited to be an administrator.

Keywords: committee work; extracurriculars; review panel; women

Partial Transcript: You mentioned when you first came here that you were invited to the poker party. So I'm assuming the culture of the statistics department is quite good for women...

Segment Synopsis: One of her female colleagues in the statistics department did not get tenured. She talks about the climate for women in the department.

Keywords: sexism; tenure

Partial Transcript: Now I spent two years at Yale...

Segment Synopsis: GW held a two-year fellowship at Yale University. She talks about sexism at Yale.

Keywords: Clare Boothe Luce Program; David Callan; I. Richard Savage; Timothy Dwight College; University of Bridgeport; Yale; sexism

Partial Transcript: Well let's switch directions then...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about the importance to her career of membership in the main statistics professional organizations.

Keywords: professional organizations

Partial Transcript: Would you talk about honors and awards you received?...

Segment Synopsis: Grace Wahba discusses honors and awards she has received, including her election to the National Academy of Sciences.

Keywords: National Academy of Sciences; awards

Partial Transcript: Well then our last two questions have to do with life after work...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about meeting her partner, David. They do folk dancing and ballroom dancing.

Keywords: David Callan; dance; family life; hobbies

Partial Transcript: I know you have one son...

Segment Synopsis: She talks about her son and grandchildren.

Keywords: family; tennis

Partial Transcript: Well we're at the end of the questions but I don't want to turn the tape off...

Segment Synopsis: GW reflects on her career at UW.

Keywords: John Carew; studnets

Partial Transcript: Well thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed