The most femiliar statisticians

Gertrude Cox:

 

Gertrude Mary Cox (of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University. She was later appointed director of both the Institute of Statistics of 1900 - 1978) was an influential American statistician and founder of the department the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of North Carolina State University. Her most important and influential research dealt with experimental design; she wrote an important book on the subject with W. G. Cochran. In 1949 Cox became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute and in 1956 she was president of the American Statistical Association. From 1931 to 1933 Cox undertook graduate studies in statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, then returned to Iowa State College as assistant in the Statistical Laboratory. Here she worked on the design of experiments. In 1939 she was appointed assistant professor of statistics at Iowa State.

In 1940 Cox was appointed professor of statistics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. There she headed the new department of Experimental Statistics.

In 1945 she became director of the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, and the Statistics Research Division of the North Carolina State College which was run by William Gemmell Cochran. In the same year of 1945 Cox became the editor of Biometrics Bulletin and of Biometrics and she held this editorship for 10 years. In 1947 she was a founder member of the International Biometric Society.

In 1950 she published a joint work with Cochran, Experimental Design, which quickly became a classic text.

In 1960 she took up her final post as Director of Statistics at the Research Triangle Institute in Durham, North Carolina. She held this post until she retired in 1964.

Cox received many honours. In 1949 she became the first woman elected into the International Statistical Institute. In 1956 she was elected President of the American Statistical Association while in 1975 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Frank yates:

 

Frank Yates (1902 - 1994) was one of the pioneers of 20th century statistics. He worked on the design of experiments, including contributions to the theory of analysis of variance and originating Yates' algorithm and the balanced incomplete block design. He became an enthusiast of electronic computers, in 1954 obtaining an Elliott 401 for Rothamsted and contributing to the initial development of statistical computing. In 1931 Yates was appointed assistant statistician at Rothamsted Experimental Station by R.A. Fisher. In 1933 he became head of statistics when Fisher went to University College London. At Rothamsted he worked on the design of experiments, including contributions to the theory ofanalysis of variance and originating Yates's algorithm and the balanced incomplete block design.

During World War II he worked on what would later be called operations research.

After the war he worked on sample survey design and analysis. He became an enthusiast of electronic computers, in 1954 obtaining an Elliott 401for Rothamsted and contributing to the initial development of statistical computing. In 1960 he was awarded the Guy Medal in Gold of the Royal Statistical Society, and in 1966 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He retired from Rothamsted to become a Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. He died in 1994, aged 92, in Harpenden.

Publications include:

·         The design and analysis of factorial experiments, Technical Communication no. 35 of the Commonwealth Bureau of Soils (1937) (alternatively attributed to the Imperial Bureau of Soil Science).

·         Statistical tables for biological, agricultural and medical research (1938, coauthor R.A. Fisher) sixth edition

·         Sampling methods for censuses and surveys (1949)

·         Computer programs GENFAC, RGSP, Fitquan. 

  Kirstine smith:

           Kirstine Smith (1878 - 1939) was born in Denmark. She was admitted as a candidate for a doctorate in statistics in 1916 at the University of London  and wrote a thesis that was a precursor to modern optimal design theory, published in 1918 Biometrika.  Karl Pearson considered her to be one of his most brilliant mathematical statisticians.  Her work with Pearson on minimum chi-square spurred a controversial dialog between Pearson and Fisher, and led to Fisher’s introduction of sufficient statistics.  She returned to teaching in Denmark and ended her career there .