Herman Otto Hartley (born Hermann Otto Hirschfeld in Berlin, Germany; 1912–1980) was a German American statistician. He made significant contributions in many areas of statistics, mathematical programming, and optimization. He also founded Texas A&M University's Department of Statistics. Hartley's earliest papers appeared under the name H.O. Hirschfeld. His father having been born in England, Hartley had dual nationality. He cleverly translated his German last name Hirschfeld (Hirsch = Hart, Feld = field = lea = ley) into English. Career In 1934, at the age of 22, Hartley earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Berlin, followed by a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from the University of Cambridge in 1940 and a Doctorate of Science in mathematical statistics from University College London in 1954. He began his independent academic career at UCL, where he met Egon Pearson, with whom he collaborated to produce the classic two-volume Biometrika Tables for Statisticians, and also developed Hartley's F-max test for equality of variances. A one-year Visiting Research Professor in Statistics position at then-Iowa State College brought Hartley to the United States in 1953 and to the forefront of a major statistics program. The position was extended after that initial year to include nine more years, during which he became deeply involved in research and teaching. His early computational talent enabled him to play a prominent part in instituting computing both for scientific and administrative purposes at Iowa State, which for the first time had university-wide service in data processing and numerical analysis. He also was a remarkably active consultant on statistics to a wide variety of scientists on campus. After a decade at Iowa State, Hartley came to Texas A&M University, where he was appointed in 1963 as a distinguished professor and founding director of the Institute of Statistics. He was tasked with leading the Graduate Institute of Statistics, which had been formed a year earlier with only a handful of faculty, two graduate students, and the lofty mandate of providing statistical research, consulting, and instruction for all of Texas A&M University. In the ensuing decade and a half, he built his initial faculty of four into a group of 16, directed more than 30 doctoral students, and attracted significant research funding. Hartley was short in stature, and in giving lectures, he would often begin with an audience icebreaker, asking, "Can you hear me? Can you see me?" He brought many distinguished