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John Willett is an expert in statistical methods for analyzing the timing and occurrence of events; methods for modeling change, learning, and development; longitudinal research design; and methods for making causal inferences from quantitativer data. The influential book by Willett and his colleague Judy Singer, titled Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, is an integrated presentation of statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal data. His most recent book, with his colleague Richard Murnane, titled Methods Matter: Improving Causal Inference in Educational and Social Science Research, seeks to bring innovative methods for making causal inferences into greater prominence in social research.
Willett was born and raised in northern England. He was educated at Harrogate Grammar School and Oxford University, where he studied physics (specializing in quantum mechanics) in the 1960s. At the end of the decade, he was a professional musician, playing bass guitar in a Rock n'Roll band. In the 1970s, he and his wife lived in Hong Kong, where he taught high-school physics and mathematics for almost a decade. In Hong Kong, he authored a high-school physics textbook for local schools, presented a weekly television science show, entitled Tomorrow's World, and celebrated the birth of his daughter. He traveled widely before settling in the United States in 1980, where he obtained his Ph.D. in applied statistics at Stanford University. During his career at Harvard, in addition to teaching courses in applied statistics, he has served as the Academic Dean and then Acting Dean of HGSE. He is now a U.S. citizen and a grandfather. He is retired from active full-time teaching and lives on the shores of the Monterey Bay in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife and a large woolly dog called Nanuk Sparkles McGee. He takes great pleasure in following the professional and personal trajectories of his former students, and celebrates the immense good that they are reaping collectively in the world.