Charles Roy Henderson

Who was Charles Roy Henderson?

Charles Roy Henderson was an American statistician and a pioneer in animal breeding — the application of quantitative methods for the genetic evaluation of domestic livestock. He developed mixed model equations to obtain best linear unbiased predictions of breeding values and, in general, any random effect. He invented three methods for the estimation of variance components in unbalanced settings of mixed models, and invented a method for constructing the inverse of Wright's numerator relationship matrix based on a simple list of pedigree information. He, with his Ph.D. student Shayle R. Searle, greatly extended the use of matrix notation in statistics. His methods are widely used by the domestic livestock industry throughout the world and are a cornerstone of linear model theory.

Henderson obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at Iowa State University, where he was a student of Professor L. N. Hazel. Henderson joined the faculty of the Department of Animal Science at Cornell University in 1948, and headed the Animal Breeding division for nearly 30 years until he retired in 1976. After retiring from Cornell, he was a visiting professor at the University of Guelph and University of Illinois until his death. He completed his book in 1984 at the University of Guelph.