Hotelling's first degree, a BA in journalism at U Washington in 1919, was interrupted by the First World War. Scheduled to fight in the trenches, his life was saved by a mule named Dynamite that broke his leg and caused him to be invalided out of service. After an MA in mathematics at U Washington, he obtained his PhD (in topology) at Princeton U in 1924. His interest in Statistics resulted from his first job, which was in the Food Research Institute at Stanford U. In 1931 he was appointed Professor of Economics at Columbia U. In 1946 he was invited to found the Department of Statistics at UNC. He was President of the Econometrics Society in 1936 and of the IMS in 1941. He was the IMS Rietz Lecturer in 1951. He was elected to membership of the NAS in 1970.

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/hotelling-harold.pdf Biographical memoir and photograph.