In 1965, together with Samuel Shapiro, he developed the Shapiro–Wilk test, which can indicate whether a sample of numbers would be unusual if it came from a Gaussian distribution.
From 1951 to 1955, he was a research associate, instructor, and assistant professor at Iowa State University, where he received a Master of Science in statistics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in statistics in 1955 under the supervision of Oscar Kempthorne.
From 1959 to 1963, he was a professor and director of research in statistics at Rutgers University.
[1] In 1981, he was appointed an adjunct professor of statistics at Carleton University.
[3] In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "insightful guidance on important matters related to our country's national statistical system".