In the nearly four decades that Donald Bentley spent teaching statistics at Pomona, one number stands out above all the others.

It's the large number of students who, with his encouragement, went on to earn advanced degrees and pursue careers in this esoteric mathematical discipline.

"Don must be far and away the largest producer of statisticians of any person at any small liberal arts college in the world," says John Crowley '68, now a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Bentley, whose imprint on Pomona dates from the early 1960s, retired this year. His first position at the College was directed toward supporting the physical biology program. He taught probability and statistics, as well as an introductory statistics course for students studying biology, zoology and chemistry. He also taught courses in mathematical modeling, calculus and differential equations.

Biostatistics was an early interest of Bentley's, and one that many of his proteges adopted.

"You sort of get a calling," he says. When he was a student at Stanford University, his mentor asked him to analyze some data. "I went home and did it," he says, "and all of a sudden I realized no one had ever analyzed this data before. One of the things I worked on was the effect of temperature on clotting during surgery, and I thought, 'Wow, the analysis I do on this can affect people's lives.' I thought, 'This is something that is really important.'"

Former students say Bentley's practical approach had an important influence on them, both inside and outside the classroom. Counseling students on their studies and career options was "the kind of thing Don did on a regular basis," says Ronald Thisted '72, now an authority on statistical computing and chairman of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine.

In his teaching, Bentley "gave people a really solid foundation in mathematical statistics," says Laurel Beckett '68, an authority on Alzheimer's patient data who is establishing a biostatistics division at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. "The other thing he did was to give students a practical sense of how to apply their knowledge--that you can't do it without really learning and understanding the field you're working in."

Bentley has explored new ground in recent years through archaeometrics, in which statistical reasoning and precise measuring systems are used to infer the probable location of buried archeological artifacts. He also became an ordained Protestant minister, and began preaching frequently at Pilgrim Congregational Church in Pomona, the church associated with the founding of Pomona College.

In contemplating his 37 years at the College, he is especially pleased about the significant number of students he influenced, and who are now influencing society.

"We have people at the National Institutes of Health, at the Bureau of the Census, in government, in industry," he says. "One of the most gratifying things is seeing the students out there and seeing the impact they're having."

--Michael Balchunas