Judy Zeh

Judith E. (Judy) Zeh is an American statistician. She retired from the University of Washington, where she spent her entire career, and is a research professor emerita of statistics at Washington. She is known for her research on bowhead whale populations. Research Zeh's research concerns population dynamics and population estimation. She has applied these methods more specifically, in association with the International Whaling Commission, to bowhead whale populations. In this application, she and her collaborator Adrian Raftery became pioneers in the use of Bayesian statistics for population estimation. In 1999, she was elected for a three year term as chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission. She became the first woman in over 50 years in that position. Education and career Zeh was educated entirely at the University of Washington, where she also spent her entire academic career. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1962, and the next year began working as a computer programmer in Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, where she remained until 1974.