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Betty Flehinger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Betty Jeanne Flehinger-Schultz (née Isaacs, c. 1922 – May 21, 2000) was a biostatistician known for her research on clinical decision support systems and cancer screening. She worked for many years for IBM Research.[1]

Education and career

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Betty Jeanne Isaacs is a 1941 graduate of Barnard College,[2][3] where she was founder and president of the college's physics club.[3] She earned a master's degree in physics from Cornell University in 1942 with a thesis titled A Revision of the Isotopic Mass Scale.[2][4] As Betty Flehinger, she completed a Ph.D. in 1961 from Columbia University. Her dissertation, A General Model for the Reliability Analysis of Systems under Various Preventive Maintenance Policies, was supervised by Ronald Pyke.[2][5]

She joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1957,[2] initially working on data analysis for the prediction of the reliability of computing devices.[6] By 1964 she was manager for probability and statistics in the mathematical sciences department of the center.[2]

Recognition

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Flehinger's work with Ralph Engle developing the HEME computer system using Bayesian statistics to diagnose blood diseases has been named as a landmark by the International Medical Informatics Association.[7] Flehinger was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1968,[8] and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1996.[9]

References

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  1. ^ "Flehinger-Schultz", Paid death notices, The New York Times, 23 May 2000
  2. ^ a b c d e "Notes about authors", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 59 (305): 273–277, March 1964, JSTOR 2282875
  3. ^ a b "Betty Jeanne Isaacs", Mortarboard, Barnard College, 1941, p. 70
  4. ^ A Revision of the Isotopic Mass Scale, as cited by Platzman, Robert L. (1 July 1945), The Interaction of Nuclear Radiations with Matter: The Physical Background of Radiation Chemistry, Report MDDC-273, US Atomic Energy Commission, p. 52
  5. ^ Betty Flehinger at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. ^ Brennan, Jean Ford (18 February 1971), The IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University: A History
  7. ^ "Medical Informatics Landmark 1967: Ralph Engle and Betty Flehinger develop HEME", Rutgers University Medical Informatics History Project, retrieved 2021-04-15
  8. ^ Historic Fellows, American Association for the Advancement of Science, retrieved 2021-04-15
  9. ^ ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, retrieved 2021-04-15