Donald W. Marquardt (March 13, 1929, New York City – July 5, 1997,[1] New Castle, Delaware) was an American statistician, the rediscoverer of the Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear least squares fitting algorithm.
[1] 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.
[4] As manager of the DuPont Applied Statistics Group, he led development of the Product Quality Management 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.