Ronald Fisher

Sir Ronald Fisher FRS
Fisher in 1913
Born	Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-02-17)17 February 1890 London, England
Died	29 July 1962(1962-07-29) (aged 72) Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Alma mater	Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Known for	Fisher's exact test Fisher's inequality Fisher's principle Fisher's geometric model Fisher's Iris data set Fisher's linear discriminant Fisher's equation Fisher information Fisher's method Fisherian runaway Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection Fisher's noncentral hypergeometric distribution Fisher's z-distribution Fisher transformation Fisher consistency F-distribution F-test Fisher–Tippett distribution Fisher–Tippett–Gnedenko theorem Fisher–Yates shuffle Fisher–Race blood group system Behrens–Fisher problem Cornish–Fisher expansion von Mises–Fisher distribution family allowance Wright–Fisher model Ancillary statistic Fiducial inference Intraclass correlation Infinitesimal model Inverse probability Lady tasting tea Null hypothesis Maximum likelihood estimation Neutral theory of molecular evolution Particulate inheritance p-value Random effects model Relative species abundance Reproductive value Sexy son hypothesis Sufficient statistic Analysis of variance Variance
Spouse	Ruth Eileen Guinness (1917)
Awards	Weldon Memorial Prize (1930) Royal Medal (1938) Guy Medal (1946) Bateson Lecture (1951) Copley Medal (1955)
Scientific career
Fields	Statistics, genetics, and evolutionary biology
Institutions	Rothamsted Experimental Station University College London University of Cambridge University of Adelaide Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Academic advisors	James Hopwood Jeans F. J. M. Stratton[1]
Doctoral students	Walter Bodmer[2] D. J. Finney[2] Ebenezer Laing[3] Mary F. Lyon[4] C. R. Rao[2]

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS^[5] (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic.^[6] For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science"^[7][8] and "the single most important figure in 20th century statistics".^[9] In genetics, Fisher was the one to most comprehensively combine the ideas of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin,^[10] as his work used mathematics to combine Mendelian genetics and natural selection; this contributed to the revival of Darwinism in the early 20th-century revision of the theory of evolution known as the modern synthesis. For his contributions to biology, Richard Dawkins declared Fisher to be the greatest of Darwin's successors.^[11] He is also considered one of the founding fathers of Neo-Darwinism.^[12][13] According to statistician Jeffrey T. Leek, Fisher is the most influential scientist of all time based off the number of citations of his contributions.^[14]

From 1919, he worked at the Rothamsted Experimental Station for 14 years;^[15] there, he analyzed its immense body of data from crop experiments since the 1840s, and developed the analysis of variance (ANOVA). He established his reputation there in the following years as a biostatistician.

Fisher founded quantitative genetics,^[16][17] and together with J. B. S. Haldane and Sewall Wright, is known as one of the three principal founders of population genetics.^[18] He outlined Fisher's principle, the Fisherian runaway and sexy son hypothesis theories of sexual selection. As the founder of modern statistics,^[19][20] Fisher made countless contributions, including creating the modern method of maximum likelihood and deriving the properties of maximum likelihood estimators,^[21] fiducial inference, the derivation of various sampling distributions, founding principles of the design of experiments, and much more. Fisher's famous 1921 paper alone has been described as "arguably the most influential article" on mathematical statistics in the twentieth century, and equivalent to "Darwin on evolutionary biology, Gauss on number theory, Kolmogorov on probability, and Adam Smith on economics".^[22] As a result of his influence and numerous fundamental contributions, Fisher has been described as the "most original evolutionary biologist of the twentieth century" and as the "greatest statistician of all time".^[23]

Fisher held strong views on race and eugenics, insisting on racial differences. Although he was clearly a eugenicist, there is some debate as to whether Fisher supported scientific racism (see Ronald Fisher § Views on race). He was the Galton Professor of Eugenics at University College London and editor of the Annals of Eugenics.^[24]