Peter Welch was born in Detroit and in his second year moved with his family to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He attended public schools in Wauwatosa, Eagleville, and Waukesha, graduating from Waukesha High School in 1946. He did his undergraduate work at the U. of Wisconsin and the U. of Chicago and received an MS in Mathematics from the U. of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1951. As a consequence of the experimental program at the U. of Chicago he has the questionable distinction of never having received a bachelors degree.

From 1951 until 1956 he worked on a radar development project for the Physical Science Laboratory of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. The work was done under a contract with the Sandia Corporation of Albuquerque. He was supervisor of the project from 1953 to 1956. The project was heavily involved with data reduction and analysis and hence with the IBM equipment of that era. He received an MS in Physics from NM State in 1956.

In 1956 he joined IBM Research in Poughkeepsie, NY. He moved to Yorktown Heights, NY in 1957 as part of the first contingent at the IBM Yorktown Research Center. In 1963 he received a Ph. D. in Mathematical Statistics from Columbia University. At IBM Research his technical work involved speech recognition, computer systems measurement and modeling, seismic signal processing, queuing theory. Fourier methods, spectral estimation, Monte Carlo simulation, and the design of software for scientific-engineering graphics and data analysis. He held a number of managerial posts and received two Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards. During this period he authored more than 50 publications including two book chapters. He also held several adjunct appointments at Columbia University. He retired from IBM Research in September 1993.

He worked for the IBM Center for Statistical Process Control in Boca Raton, FL from October 1993 till November 1994. Since November 1994 he has worked for Walpole Software and Columbia University. He is currently Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia. He became an enthusiast for the WWW after being introduced to it in late 1994 by Professor Jim Kurose of the U. of Massachusetts.

He's an avid tennis player and begins each day with a 6:30 singles game. That leaves plenty of time for the outdoors, books, golf, food, the PC and the other great things of life.