Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Correspondence, manuscripts, addresses, documents and printed materials. Correspondents include: Milton Friedman, Samuel S. Wilks, Nathan Pusey, William Proxmire, Helen M. Walker, Ray Lyman Wilbur, Alfred Cowles, 3d and Ragnar Frisch. The papers also include biographical, teaching and research materials; publications and drafts of articles and books including his study, "The Teaching of Statistics," and materials on the concept of "Hotelling's Generalized T."

Miner's correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, manuscript and typescript notes, and printed materials relating to the history of Columbia University. Interfiled with Miner's papers are the correspondence, manuscripts, and notes of Columbia librarian Roger Howson (1882-1962) who had been writing a history of the University at the time of his retirement in 1948. Howson and Miner's correspondence is chiefly with Columbia University administrators, faculty, staff, and alumni and deals entirely with the history of the university. The two major Columbia correspondents are Provost Frank D. Fackenthal and Secretary Philip M. Hayden. There are manuscript and typescript drafts of chapters and parts of chapters by Howson and Miner, but neither's history was ever completed or published. These drafts along with the related correspondence, notes, and typescript copies of original manuscripts from Columbia's archives and manuscript collections are filed together under the appropriate headings in the Name and Subject Files. In addition there are two partially completed typescript drafts of each history.

The Corporation awards grants to nonprofit organizations and institutions for projects that are broadly educational in nature and that show promise of having national or international impact. Certain appropriations are made for activities, such as Corporation-led initiatives that are administered by the foundation's officers. The trustees set the overall policies of the foundation and have final authority to approve all grants above $50,000 recommended by the program staff. Grants of $25,000 or less, called discretionary grants, are made upon the approval of the president and are reported to the board; larger discretionary grants, those between $25,000 and $50,000, are also reviewed by a Corporation-wide group, which makes recommendations to the president. (from Program Guidelines 2003-2004 (http://www.carnegie.org/sub/program/areas.html))

Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, and printed material by and about George Udny Yule, English statistician. 17 letters are from Yule to John Wishart, who took over his chair in mathematical statistics at Cambridge University in 1931, with carbons of his letters from Wishart, and 2 letters from Sir Frank Leonard Engledow to Wishart concerning Yule. Letters in the late 1940's are of a more personal nature, because of his early retirement for health reasons. He was a man of many interests, seen in his manuscript poem, his early printed article for the Royal Statistical Society, and the various memorabilia

This collection consists of the papers of Herbert E. Robbins (1915-2001), Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Columbia University.