Howard C. Nielson

Howard C. Nielson was a four-term congressman who served Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, from January 1983 to January 1991. He also served in the Utah House of Representatives from 1967 to 1975. He was speaker from 1973 to 1975. He served in the Utah State Senate from January 1997 to the end of December 2000.

After he concluded his political career, he and his wife, Julie, served as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia and Hungary. They also served a part-time mission at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.

Nielson was born on September 12, 1924, in Richfield. After he graduated from Richfield High School, he served during World War II in the Army Air Corps of Engineers as radar mechanic in Canada and the Philippines. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Utah, a master’s degree from the University of Oregon, an MBA from Stanford University, and a doctorate in business administration from Stanford.

Before his teaching career at Brigham Young University in 1957, Nielson worked as a research economist at Stanford Research Institute while completing his graduate work. He also taught courses in business, economics and statistics at the University of Utah, University of Oregon, Menlo College, and Stanford.

Nielson also worked as a consultant to various firms since 1957. Some of the firms included Hercules, Hill Air Force Base and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He founded the Department of Statistics at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

He married Julia Adams in 1947 and they had four daughters and three sons. After her death, he married Donna Esther Brown in 2006 and she died in 2015.

He died on May 20, 2020.