History

Notable Alumni

Jay S. Siegel

Jay S. Siegel (1922–2021): Shortly after earning a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Siegel began his four-decade-long Census Bureau career as a statistical clerk in the Business Division for a few weeks before jumping at the opportunity to work as a Junior Professional Assistant Statistician in the Population Division. Under the supervision of demographers, statisticians, and mathematicians, Dr. Henry Shryock, Wilson Grabill, Dr. Hope Eldridge, and Lawrence Norman, among others, Siegel produced population estimates, population projections, and technical reports using statistical sampling and new surveys like the Current Population Survey (CPS) to process data from the 1940 and future censuses. Given his previous experience with statistical sampling and impressive work effort, Siegel became one of the "Founding Fathers" of demographic analysis (DA), a technique the Census Bureau first utilized as a part of the 1950 Census to help statisticians develop an understanding of the age, sex, and racial composition of a population and how it has changed over time through the basic demographic processes of birth, death, and migration.

In addition to establishing DA as a crucial tool for processing the results of the 1950 and future decennial censuses, Siegel served as the first foreign "consultant" approved by Castro's government (1959). He also assisted in the process of developing an international multilingual dictionary of demographic terms (c. 1970) and co-wrote The Methods and Materials of Demography (1976), the premier textbook for those interested in using demographic data, among other career accomplishments.

Finally, Spiegel retired from the Census Bureau in 1982 as a senior statistician for demographic analysis and research in the Population Division. However, he maintained an office at the Census Bureau until 1985. Upon retiring from the Census Bureau, Spiegel served as a full-time professor in the Department of Demography at Georgetown until 1995. Ultimately, Jay Siegel had an extensive career in which he worked as a Census Bureau statistician, taught at seven different universities at various points in his career, wrote or co-wrote numerous books and articles, became a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and received a Gold Medal from the Department of Commerce, among numerous other accomplishments.