Founders of statistics

Statistics is the theory and application of mathematics to the scientific method including hypothesis generation, experimental design, sampling, data collection, data summarization, estimation, prediction and inference from those results to the population from which the experimental sample was drawn. This article lists statisticians who have been instrumental in the development of theoretical and applied statistics.

Name	Nationality	Birth	Death	Contribution	References
Al-Kindi	Iraqi	801	873	Developed the first code breaking algorithm based on frequency analysis. He wrote a book entitled "Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages", containing detailed discussions on statistics
Graunt, John	English	1620	1674	Pioneer of demography who produced the first life table
Bayes, Thomas	English	1702	1761	Developed the interpretation of probability now known as Bayes theorem
Laplace, Pierre-Simon	French	1749	1827	Co-invented Bayesian statistics. Invented exponential families (Laplace transform), conjugate prior distributions, asymptotic analysis of estimators (including negligibility of regular priors). Used maximum-likelihood and posterior-mode estimation and considered (robust) loss functions
Playfair, William	Scottish	1759	1823	Pioneer of statistical graphics
Gauss, Carl Friedrich	German	1777	1855	Invented least squares estimation methods (with Legendre). Used loss functions and maximum-likelihood estimation
Quetelet, Adolphe	Belgian	1796	1874	Pioneered the use of probability and statistics in the social sciences
Nightingale, Florence	English	1820	1910	Applied statistical analysis to health problems, contributing to the establishment of epidemiology and public health practice. Developed statistical graphics especially for mobilizing public opinion. First female member of the Royal Statistical Society.
Galton, Francis	English	1822	1911	Invented the concepts of standard deviation, correlation, regression
Thiele, Thorvald N.	Danish	1838	1910	Introduced cumulants and the term "likelihood". Introduced a Kalman filter in time-series
Peirce, Charles Sanders	American	1839	1914	Formulated modern statistics in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (1877–1878) and "A Theory of Probable Inference" (1883). With a repeated measures design, introduced blinded, controlled randomized experiments (before Fisher). Invented optimal design for experiments on gravity, in which he "corrected the means". He used correlation, smoothing, and improved the treatment of outliers. Introduced terms "confidence" and "likelihood" (before Neyman and Fisher). While largely a frequentist, Peirce's possible world semantics introduced the "propensity" theory of probability. See the historical books of Stephen Stigler
Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro	Irish	1845	1926	Revived exponential families (Laplace transforms) in statistics. Extended Laplace's (asymptotic) theory of maximum-likelihood estimation. Introduced basic results on information, which were extended and popularized by R. A. Fisher
Pearson, Karl	English	1857	1936	Numerous innovations, including the development of the Pearson chi-squared test and the Pearson correlation. Founded the Biometrical Society and Biometrika, the first journal of mathematical statistics and biometry
Spearman, Charles	English	1863	1945	Extended the Pearson correlation coefficient to the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient
Gosset, William Sealy (known as "Student")	English	1876	1937	Discovered the Student t distribution and invented the Student's t-test
Fisher, Ronald	English	1890	1962	Wrote the textbooks and articles that defined the academic discipline of statistics, inspiring the creation of statistics departments at universities throughout the world. Systematized previous results with informative terminology, substantially improving previous results with mathematical analysis (and claims). Developed the analysis of variance, clarified the method of maximum likelihood (without the uniform priors appearing in some previous versions), invented the concept of sufficient statistics, developed Edgeworth's use of exponential families and information, introducing observed Fisher information, and many theoretical concepts and practical methods, particularly for the design of experiments
Bonferroni, Carlo Emilio	Italian	1892	1960	Invented the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons
Wilcoxon, Frank	Irish-American	1892	1965	Invented two statistical tests: Wilcoxon rank-sum test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test
Neyman, Jerzy	Polish-American	1894	1981	Discovered the confidence interval and co-developed the Neyman–Pearson lemma
Deming, W. Edwards	American	1900	1993	Developed methods for statistical quality control
Pearson, Egon	English	1895	1980	Co-developed the Neyman–Pearson lemma of statistical hypothesis testing
Finetti, Bruno de	Italian	1906	1985	Pioneer of the "operational subjective" conception of probability. Used this as the basis for exposition of the Bayesian method of statistical analysis. Developed the representation theorem for exchangeable random variables showing that they are the basis of the IID model in statistics.
Kendall, Maurice	English	1907	1983	Co-developed methods for assessing statistical randomness; invented Kendall tau rank correlation coefficient
Tukey, John	American	1915	2000	Jointly popularized Fast Fourier transformation, pioneer of exploratory data analysis and graphical presentation of data, developed the jackknife for variance estimation, invented the box plot.
Blackwell, David	American	1919	2010	Co-developed Rao-Blackwell theorem and wrote one of the first Bayesian textbooks, Basic Statistics.
Rao, Calyampudi Radhakrishna	Indian	1920		Co-developed Cramér–Rao bound and Rao–Blackwell theorem, invented MINQUE method of variance component estimation.
Cox, David	English	1924		Developed the proportional hazards model for the analysis of survival data
Efron, Bradley	American	1938		Invented the bootstrap resampling technique for deriving an empirical distribution of an estimate of a model parameter

Founders of departments of statistics

The role of a department of statistics is discussed in a 1949 article by Harold Hotelling, which helped to spur the creation of many departments of statistics.

Year	Country	University	Founder	References
1911	England	University College London	Pearson, Karl
1918	USA	Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health	Pearl, Raymond
~1931	India	Indian Statistical Institute	Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
~1931	USA	Columbia University	Hotelling, Harold
1933	USA	Iowa State University	Snedecor, George W.
1941	USA	North Carolina State University	Cox, Gertrude
1942	Sweden	Uppsala University	Wold, Herman
1947	England	University of Manchester	Bartlett, M. S.
1947	USA	Department of Biometry and Statistics, Cornell University	Federer, Walter T.
1948	USA	Stanford University	—
1948	India	University of Mumbai	M. C. Chakrabarti
1949	USA	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	—
1949	USA	University of Chicago	—
1953	England	Cambridge University, Statistics Lab	Wishart, John
1953	India	University of Pune	V. S. Huzurbazar
1955	USA	University of California, Berkeley	Neyman, Jerzy
1957	USA	Harvard University	Cochran, W. G. Mosteller, Frederick
1957	Australia	University of Sydney	Lancaster, H.O.
1962	USA	Texas A&M University	Hartley, Herman Otto
1963	USA	Yale University	Anscombe, Francis
1965	USA	Princeton University	Tukey, John W
1965	USA	University of Iowa	Hogg, Robert V.
1966	Scotland	University of Glasgow	Aitchison, John Silvey, David
1973	USA	The Ohio State University	Whitney, D. Ransom
1979	Canada	University of Toronto	—
1981	India	Vidyasagar University	Anil Kumar Gain
1982	Hong Kong	Chinese University of Hong Kong	Tong, Howell
1984	India	Banaras Hindu University	Singh, S.N.
1988	England	University of Oxford	Hinkley, D. V.
1996	USA	University of Virginia School of Medicine	Harrell, Frank E.

See also

• List of statisticians
• History of statistics
• Timeline of probability and statistics
• List of people considered father or mother of a scientific field

External links

• StatProb – peer-reviewed encyclopedia sponsored by statistics and probability societies