Charles Frederick Mosteller (December 24, 1916 – July 23, 2006) was an American mathematician, considered one of the most eminent statisticians of the 20th century.

He completed his ScM degree at Carnegie Tech in 1939, and enrolled at Princeton University in 1939 to work on a PhD with statistician Samuel S.

He was hired by Harvard University's Department of Social Relations in 1946, where he received tenure in 1951 and served as acting chair from 1953 to 1954.

[1] With David Wallace[5][6] Mosteller studied the attribution problem that asks who wrote each of the disputed Federalist Papers, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton.

[8] Prompted by a seminar by Derek Bok, in the last two or three minutes of the class Mosteller would ask the students to write down what was the muddiest point in the lecture and what they'd like to know more about.

[8] Mosteller taught a class in probability and statistics as part of the educational television program, Continental Classroom - Mathematics, in 1960 and 1961, supported by the Ford Foundation and broadcast on NBC: 75,000 students took this class for credit at 320 colleges and universities around the country, and 1.2 million watched the lectures on television on 170 stations.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday covered the statistical material, and Tuesday and Thursday were problem sessions.

[citation needed] Mosteller's graduate students included Janellen Huttenlocher, Persi Diaconis, Stephen Fienberg, Stanley Wasserman, Ralph D'Agostino, Sanford Weisberg[11] and Ward Edwards.