Ronald Aylmer Fisher ( 1890 - 1962 )

Birth: East Finchley, London, Greater London, England, United Kingdom (17 February 1890) Death: Adelaide, Australia, Oceania (29 July 1962) Burial: St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide, Australia, Oceania Profession: Teacher; statistician Research Field: Statistics; biometry; genetics; evolution; eugenics Education: Harrow School; Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, MA in Mathematics (1912); ScD Career: Founding Chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society (1911); worked on a farm in Canada (1913); worked for the Eugenics Education Society and was a paid reviewer for 'Eugenics Review' statistician in the City of London and maths teacher in public schools and at Thames Nautical Training College and Bradfield College (1913-1919); rejected for service in the army during World War I because of his very poor eyesight; worked at Rothamsted Agricultural Research Station for 14 years (1919-1933) where he developed the analysis of variance and rose to become Head of the Department of Statistics; served in several official committees to promote eugenics, including the Committee for Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization which drafted legislation aiming to limit the fertility of "feeble minded high-grade defectives ... comprising a tenth of the total population" (1931-1934); head of the Department of Eugenics at University College London (1933-1939); editor of the 'Annals of Eugenics', now called 'Annals of Human Genetics' (1934); Balfour Chair of Genetics, University of Cambridge (1943); continued to hold favourable views of eugenics after the holocaust of World War II and spoke in support of Nazi-associated eugenicists and 'racial cleansing' in Nazi Germany; cofounded the journal 'Heredity' with Cyril Darlington (1947); consultant to tobacco firms, in which capacity he spoke out against the 1950 study showing that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, arguing that correlation does not imply causation; in a statement to UNESCO regarding race stated his belief that "scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development"; emigrated to Australia (1957); senior research fellow at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Adelaide; considered the founder of modern statistics and population genetics; used mathematics to combine Mendelian genetics and natural selection, this contributed to the revision of the theory of evolution known as the modern synthesis Honours: Kt 1952 Membership: Fellow Election Date: 2/05/1929 Medals/Prizes: Royal Medal 1938; Darwin Medal 1948; Copley Medal 1955 Lectures: Croonian 1953, gave lecture on poulation genetics.