Walter Andrew Shewhart (pronounced like "shoe-heart", March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control and also related to the Shewhart cycle.W. Edwards Deming said of him: As a statistician, he was, like so many of the rest of us, self-taught, on a good background of physics and mathematics.