Donald Marquardt

Donald Marquardt

Donald W. Marquardt (March 13, 1929 – July 5, 1997) was an American statistician, the rediscoverer of the Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear least squares fitting algorithm.

Marquardt joined DuPont in 1953 and worked there for 39 years. He also founded and managed the DuPont Quality Management & Technology Center. In 1963 he published his famous paper "algorithm for least-squares estimation of nonlinear problems" in SIAM journal. Marquardt developed his algorithm to solve fitting nonlinear chemical models to laboratory data.

As manager of the DuPont Applied Statistics Group, he led development of the Product Quality Management(PQM) methodology and computer systems that implemented the company's continuous improvement initiatives from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.

In 1991, he established his own company, Donald W. Marquardt and Associates, which provides consulting and training in quality management, quality assurance, ISO 9000 standards, applied statistics, strategic planning and organizational change.

He died from a heart attack at the age of 68.