Tufte, Edward R(olf) (1942– )

US political scientist, statistician, and information designer. He became widely known as a pioneer proponent of using graphs, charts, diagrams, and other visual elements – on both the printed page and computers – to convey significant information with more clarity. In furtherance of this he started his own firm, Graphics Press, to publish his own handsomely designed books, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) and Envisioning Information (1990), in which scientific and aesthetic elements combine to advance his ideas about making the complex more comprehensible.

Tufte was born in Kansas City, Missouri. After taking his PhD at Yale (1965), he taught public policy at Princeton (1967–71), then joined the faculty at Yale (1971) where he became a professor of political science and statistics (1977). He published various specialized monographs in his field, such as Political Control of the Economy (1978).