What are the most important statisticians, and what is it that made them famous?
(Reply just one scientist per answer please.)
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1$\begingroup$ Converted to community wiki. $\endgroup$– user88Dec 4, 2010 at 0:14
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$\begingroup$ what is community wiki? $\endgroup$– mariana sofferDec 4, 2010 at 0:53
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$\begingroup$ @Mariana: sharepointoverflow.com/questions/432/what-is-community-wiki $\endgroup$– Christopher AdenDec 4, 2010 at 4:32
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3$\begingroup$ @Mariana The idea is that pools and list-ofs are converted to a form in which they can be easily managed (due to lower rep req to edit) and voted up/down without hurting participants' reputation (votes on CW posts does not give/take reputation). $\endgroup$– user88Dec 4, 2010 at 16:01
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5$\begingroup$ If it weren't CW it would have to be closed as subjective and argumentative! $\endgroup$– whuber ♦Dec 21, 2010 at 19:37
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47 Answers
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3$\begingroup$ That's a tough one...when did statistics become a real field? Many of the fathers of stats were not statisticians. $\endgroup$ Dec 20, 2010 at 18:23
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1$\begingroup$ I know my choice is kind of arbitrary, because many are important but this is my favourite one, and his method allowed me to do lots of things. $\endgroup$ Dec 24, 2010 at 18:35
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22$\begingroup$ That this was selected indicates a biased prior. $\endgroup$– IteratorAug 6, 2011 at 0:20
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1$\begingroup$ Does one discover a theorem? Shouldn't it be postulating or theorizing? $\endgroup$– nicoDec 4, 2011 at 13:21
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8$\begingroup$ Sigh. I would have hoped that one could be an enthusiast of the Bayesian approach without actually believing that Bayes the man was the greatest statistician of all time. Shouldn't we honor someone who contributed important work to its development, like, e.g., Jaynes? $\endgroup$ Jan 7, 2012 at 3:26
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Ronald Fisher for his fundamental contributions to the way we analyze data, whether it be the analysis of variance framework, maximum likelihood, permutation tests, or any number of other ground-breaking discoveries.
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4$\begingroup$ It's worth noting that Fisher is equally famous for his work as a biologist (evolutionary biology and agricultural science) as he is for his statistical work. $\endgroup$ Dec 4, 2010 at 6:49
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14$\begingroup$ Even today, I occasionally meet geneticists who ask me whether it is true that the great geneticist R. A. Fisher was also an important statistician -- Leonard Savage (Annals of Statistics, 1976 jstor.org/stable/2958221). $\endgroup$– onestopDec 4, 2010 at 8:06
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2$\begingroup$ @Michael Lew: He certainly is. He managed to get over the supposed disconnection between Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution, among other accomplishments. digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/coll/special//fisher/9.pdf $\endgroup$ Dec 5, 2010 at 0:18
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6$\begingroup$ If you want to ask a tough question, ask who the second most famous statistician is. There's no doubt that Fisher is # 1. You may not like the man or some of his ideas, but he is undoubtedly the creator of Statistics as we know it today. $\endgroup$ Dec 6, 2010 at 22:41
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3$\begingroup$ @Carlos "undoubtedly the creator" are you a member of FA (Fisher's Adorators) ? Anyway Gauss introduced least square almost a hundred year before Fisher was born, and Fisher as well as Gauss were inspired by a lot of other very inspired people... it is a long and laborious story and unfortunatly for those who like THX surround movies I don't really think it has its Guru. $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 7:30
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John Tukey for Fast Fourier Transforms, exploratory data analysis (EDA), box plots, projection pursuit, jackknife (along with Quenouille). Coined the words "software" and "bit".
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3$\begingroup$ From Wikipedia "Claude E. Shannon first used the word bit in his seminal 1948 paper. He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey" $\endgroup$ Apr 6, 2014 at 4:39
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Karl Pearson for his work on mathematical statistics. Pearson correlation, Chi-square test, and principal components analysis are just a few of the incredibly important ideas that stem from his works.
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$\begingroup$ I'm really surprised that Tukey is beating Pearson right now! :) $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 19:04
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$\begingroup$ @Bob: ;-) see also go.helms-net.de/stat/images/boxplots.gif $\endgroup$ Aug 9, 2011 at 19:11
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William Sealy Gosset for Student's t-distribution and the statistically-driven improvement of beer.
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6$\begingroup$ Maybe not the most famous statistician, but when you put it like that, definitely the most important! ;o) $\endgroup$ Dec 5, 2010 at 0:13
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6$\begingroup$ @ IanS - to be precise, he improved the quality of Guiness, which is a stout, not a beer (in case you hadn't noticed, I'm Irish). $\endgroup$ Sep 23, 2011 at 10:34
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2$\begingroup$ A stout is a beer, by every reasonable definition of beer. Roasting barley does not transform the beverage into an entirely different type of beverage. $\endgroup$– BehacadOct 18, 2013 at 14:31
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Bradley Efron for the Bootstrap - one of the most useful techniques in computational statistics.
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2$\begingroup$ A related question with a nice answer: How did Efron imagine the bootstrap? $\endgroup$ Apr 6, 2014 at 2:44
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1$\begingroup$ Brad Efron did a lot in addition to the bootstrap--- such as geometry of inference $\endgroup$ Apr 9, 2017 at 12:06
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Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov, for putting probability theory on a rigorous mathematical footing. While he was a mathematician, not a statistician, undoubtedly his work is important in many branches of statistics.
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5$\begingroup$ +1 for Kolmogorov. Without him, a rigorous treatment of most fundamental statistical concepts would not be possible and therefore statistics not as reliable as they are now. $\endgroup$– ThiloDec 4, 2011 at 13:42
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2$\begingroup$ Amen. His Probability Axioms combined with Measure Theory (Émile Borel, Henri Lebesgue, Johann Radon and Maurice Fréchet) could be considered the most powerful analytical technique in applied mathematics, in my opinion. $\endgroup$– AsymLabsOct 19, 2013 at 5:46
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1$\begingroup$ Komolgorov should absolutely be first on any list of contributors to mathematical probability. The implications of his contribution are so widespread as to be ... unmeasurable. That makes his work foundational to statistics, but it doesn't make him a "famous statistician". (Neither should developers of measure theory, such as Borel, count as famous statisticians.) $\endgroup$– MarsOct 8, 2022 at 18:23
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$\begingroup$ @Mars he perhaps isn't as famous as he should be, but we are still using techniques that he invented today and ironically he is arguably more responsible for Bayesianism that the Rev Bayes. $\endgroup$ Oct 9, 2022 at 9:10
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Francis Galton for discovering statistical correlation and promoting regression.
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3$\begingroup$ +1 for Francis Galton played a very important role in giving importance to the concept of correlation. However, I found a bit strong the formulation "creating correlation". I would quote Galton itself: << "Co-relation or correlation of structure" is a phrase much used in biology, and not least in that branch of it which refers to heridity, and the idea is even more frequently present than the phrase; but I am not aware of any attempt to define it clearly >> In : "Co-relation and their Measurment" (see here galton.org/galton/index.html) $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 9:19
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$\begingroup$ @robin: You could say that Galton did not create the idea of correlation, but did create the first statistical representation of it. Google "francis galton's account of the invention of correlation" $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 19:03
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3$\begingroup$ -1 In1884,Galton wrote:"Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon other nations,and that there is need of evidence that theyare capable of fulfilling thevaried duties ofa civilized nation by themselves."Karl Pearson,Galton's disciple and biographer,echoed this opinion 40years later during his attempt to prove the undesirability of Jewish immigration into Britain:"for such men as religion,social habits,or language keep asa caste apart,there should be no place.they will not be absorbed by,and at the same time strengthenthe existing population;they will develop into a parasitic race" $\endgroup$ May 22, 2011 at 16:21
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5$\begingroup$ @IrishStat. Yup, a lot of the early statisticians were eugenists, including Pearson and Fisher. But, they were still great statisticians. $\endgroup$ May 22, 2011 at 17:26
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5$\begingroup$ @IrishStat: Fisher was the first president of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society, wrote for Eugenics Review and Annals of Eugenics from 1914 to 1947, and was appointed professor of eugenics at University College London in 1933. $\endgroup$– HenrySep 23, 2011 at 0:27
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George Box for his work on time series, designed experiments and elucidating the iterative nature of scientific discovery (proposing and testing models).
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6$\begingroup$ While looking for other names in Wikipedia, I stumbled on the fact that Box was a son-in-law of Fisher's. $\endgroup$– WayneDec 13, 2010 at 22:05
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3$\begingroup$ I presume @Hans Engler is joking, but either way Box did not invent the box plot. Tukey named the box plot, and re-invented a practice common in various fields. $\endgroup$– Nick CoxAug 17, 2013 at 13:31
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$\begingroup$ was he a statistician? I mean, did he wrote things about estimation? $\endgroup$ Dec 13, 2010 at 18:26
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2$\begingroup$ he was a mathematician that was very important to statistics. Half of the men on here lived before statistics was an "official" field of study . $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 8:48
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$\begingroup$ good point ! I guess I meant that even before it was official, some mathematicians (like Gauss) concidered statistical problems while I don't really know if Markov did concider statistical problem himself. $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2010 at 18:01
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Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson for work on experimental design, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and the Neyman-Pearson lemma.
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1$\begingroup$ Kudos to Jerzy for "proving" storks bring babies illustrating the concomitant variable problem. $\endgroup$ May 22, 2011 at 21:31
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How has Sir David Roxbee Cox not been mentioned yet?
Some feats: Cox proportional hazards models, experimental design, he did a lot of work on stochastic processes and binary data. He also advised many students who went on to do great work (Hinkley, McCullagh, Little, Atkinson, etc.)
And the man was knighted!
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$\begingroup$ +1 for Sir D.R. Cox, a great man indeed. He and co-autors wrote a number of excellent books which I believe inspired many researchers and applied statisticians around the world, and are major contributions to modern statistics. $\endgroup$– YvesDec 5, 2014 at 17:23
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2$\begingroup$ And probability. Shannon-Macmillan-Breiman. $\endgroup$– IteratorAug 6, 2011 at 0:24
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Edwin Thompson Jaynes for work on objective Bayesian methods, particularly MaxEnt and transformation groups.
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5$\begingroup$ For me, he is the best statistical thinker ever. And also one of the most interesting and distinctive writing styles I've seen. Never seen anyone use the word "common sense" like he does! $\endgroup$ Mar 12, 2011 at 14:29
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1$\begingroup$ Jaynes' book "Probability Theory" has no equal, in my opinion, for one who wishes a deep understanding the subject in practice. $\endgroup$– AsymLabsJan 9, 2018 at 20:07
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Florence Nightingale for being "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics" and developing the polar area diagram. Yes, that Florence Nightingale!
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4$\begingroup$ Nightingale did excellent work, but her originality is often exaggerated. Polar diagrams were used by several people before her, earlier in the 19th century. $\endgroup$– Nick CoxMay 27, 2013 at 10:30
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3$\begingroup$ This is what I explain to nursing students, to demonstrate to them that they should be interested in statistics. Doesn't work. $\endgroup$ Oct 18, 2013 at 20:54
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Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat for creating the theory of probability and inventing the idea of expected value (1654) in order to solve a problem grounded in statistical observations (from gambling).
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Roderick Little and Donald Rubin for the contributions in Missing Data Analysis.
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5$\begingroup$ Don Rubin also had a hand in the EM algorithm and the development of causal inference. $\endgroup$– guyAug 2, 2012 at 15:11
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George Dantzig for the Simplex Method, and for being the student who mistook two open statistics problems that Neyman had written on the board for homework problems, and in his "ignorance" solving them. I'd vote for him just for the story.
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2$\begingroup$ This story is identical to one told about John Milnor. In Milnor's case there's at least one paper (co-authored with his professor when Milnor was still an undergraduate) to give the story credence. Have you ever found a reference to the paper(s) Dantzig wrote giving his solutions? $\endgroup$– whuber ♦Dec 13, 2010 at 23:17
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1$\begingroup$ According to Wikipedia, the first paper was with/by Neyman and the second result was enough to get Dantzig a co-authorship with Abraham Wald. No actual references given, though. $\endgroup$– WayneDec 14, 2010 at 4:09
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2$\begingroup$ Thanks. It is interesting how such a story can recur and how it might actually be true in both cases! $\endgroup$– whuber ♦Dec 15, 2010 at 17:39
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2$\begingroup$ @whuber Yes, it is! My skept-o-meter says that the details of multiple stories may not be quite right, though. Perhaps both of them solved open problems, but maybe one of them knew the problem was open and the other mistook it for a homework problem. The stories would match in terms of "naive young student solves open problem, not having realized how hard it really was", but when the story became legend and someone told it as "some student ...", someone else chimed in, "oh, that was Dantzig", or "oh, that sounds like Milnor" and the stories converged. $\endgroup$– WayneDec 16, 2010 at 15:44
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Samuel S. Wilks was a leader in the development of mathematical statistics. He developed the theorem on the distribution of the likelihood ratio, a fundamental result that is used in a wide variety of situations.
He also helped found the Princeton statistics department, where he was Fred Mosteller's advisor, among others, and has a prestigious ASA award named after him.
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Abraham Wald (1902-1950) for introducing the concept of Wald-tests and for his fundamental work on statistical decision theory.
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John Nelder, for providing us the now omnipresent generalized linear model framework. By his approach of unifying various standard statistical models and its estimation method, the iteratively reweighted least squares method for ML, he gave us tools that we are using now in almost all applied and theoretical concepts that are related to exponential family models. Not to mention his contributions to optimization as the superb Nelder-Mead-Algorithm.
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Lucien Le Cam for his contribution to mathematical statistics. (maybe Local asymptotic normality and contiguity made him famous)
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3$\begingroup$ Should we add Hadley Wickham for making GoG possible in R? $\endgroup$– chlDec 15, 2010 at 20:41
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David Donoho development of multiscale ideas in statistics, and a lot of theoretically justified while practically very efficient ideas in very high dimensional statistics, CHA: computational harmonic analysis,...
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$\begingroup$ Did you guys know that he is working for a hedge fund now? $\endgroup$ Aug 9, 2011 at 18:42
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Adolphe Quetelet for his work on the "average man", and for pioneering the use of statistics in the social sciences. Before him, statistics were largely confined to the physical sciences (astronomy, in particular).
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$\begingroup$ hadn't heard of him before, but I'll check him out. Thanks for the intro! $\endgroup$ Dec 24, 2010 at 23:59