Wilson obtained his AB from Harvard U in 1899 and his PhD (supervised by Gibbs) from Yale U in 1901. He left the Yale faculty in 1907 for MIT where he became in turn Professor of Mathematics (1911) and of Physics (1917). His interests centred on aerodynamics; his modelling of wind gusts led him to Statistics. He is credited with the original idea for confidence intervals. In 1922 he was appointed Professor of Vital Statistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was elected to the NAS and the AAAS (President 1927–31). He was President of the ASA in 1929.

http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-members/20001544.html Fuller biography and photograph.