Harold Hotelling
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Fulda, Minnesota, U.S.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.
U.S. AmericanEconomics
Columbia University 1931–46
Stanford University 1927–31
University of Washington BA 1919, MA 1921
Seymour Geisser
Canonical correlation analysis
Hotelling's law
Hotelling's lemma
Hotelling's rule
Harold Hotelling (Fulda, Minnesota, September 29, 1895 – December 26, 1973) was a mathematical statistician and an influential economic theorist. His name is known to all statisticians because of Hotelling's T-square distribution and its use in statistical hypothesis testing and confidence regions. He also introduced canonical correlation analysis, and is the eponym of Hotelling's law, Hotelling's lemma, and Hotelling's rule in economics.
He was Associate Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University from 1927, a member of the faculty of Columbia University from 1931 until 1946, and a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1946 until his death. A street in Chapel Hill bears his name. In 1972 he received the North Carolina Award for contributions to science.
The historian Stephen Stigler has said that it was because of Hotelling's suggestion in a letter to R.A. Fisher that cumulants are known by their now-standard name.
His economics papers have inspired research agenda in several areas still active. Hotelling has a crucial place in the pedigree of modern economic theory. While at the University of Washington, he was encouraged to switch from pure mathematics toward mathematical economics by the famous mathematician Eric Temple Bell. Later, at Columbia University in the '40s, Hotelling in turn encouraged young Kenneth Arrow to switch from mathematics and statistics applied to acturial studies towards more general applications of mathematics in general economic theory.
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These entries have photographs. There is another at
For Hotelling's PhD students see
