Donald Marquardt

Donald W. Marquardt (March 13, 1929 – July 5, 1997^[1]) was an American statistician, the rediscoverer of the Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear least squares fitting algorithm.^[2]

Marquardt joined DuPont in 1953 and worked there for 39 years. He also founded and managed the DuPont Quality Management & Technology Center.^[1] In 1963 he published his famous paper "algorithm for least-squares estimation of nonlinear problems" in SIAM journal. Marquardt developed his algorithm to solve fitting nonlinear chemical models to laboratory data.^[2] In 1975 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[3]

As manager of the DuPont Applied Statistics Group, he led development of the Product Quality Management(PQM) methodology and computer systems that implemented the company's continuous improvement initiatives from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.^[4]

In 1991, he established his own company, Donald W. Marquardt and Associates, which provides consulting and training in quality management, quality assurance, ISO 9000 standards, applied statistics, strategic planning and organizational change.^[1]

He died from a heart attack at the age of 68.^[1]

Awards and achievements

• President of the American Statistical Association (1986)
• Elected member of the International Statistical Institute.
• Leader of the U.S. delegation to the ISO 9000 International Quality Standard writing group.
• American Society for Quality (ASQ) Shewhart Medal (1987)
• American Statistical Association Statistician of the Year (1993–94)
• American Statistical Association Founders Award (1995)
• American National Standards Institute Meritorious Service Award

References