# 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. Statisticians are skilled people who thus apply statistical methods. Hundreds of statisticians are notable. This article lists statisticians who have been especially instrumental in the development of theoretical and applied statistics.
| Name | Nationality | Birth | Death | Contribution |
| Al-Kindi | Abbasid Caliphate | 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 Bayesian probability |
| 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 |
| Carl Friedrich Gauss | 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 |
| Anderson, Oskar Johann Viktor (also known as Anderson, Oskar Nikolaevich) | Russian, Bulgarian, German | 1887 | 1960 | A leading representative of the so-called Continental School of statistics. Invented the variate difference method for analyzing time series at the same time but independently from Gosset. A pioneer of random sampling in demographics and of quantitative methods applied to socio-economic sciences. |
| 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 |
| de Finetti, Bruno | 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 | 2023 | Co-developed Cramér–Rao bound and Rao–Blackwell theorem, invented MINQUE method of variance component estimation. |
| Cox, David | English | 1924 | 2022 | 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 |
| 1911 | England | University College London | Pearson, Karl |
| 1918 | USA | Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | Pearl, Raymond |
| 1929 | Sweden | Lund University | Sven Dag Wicksell |
| ~1931 | India | Indian Statistical Institute | Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis |
| ~1931 | USA | Columbia University | Hotelling, Harold |
| 1931 | USA | University of Pennsylvania | — |
| 1933 | USA | Iowa State University | Snedecor, George W. |
| 1935 | USA | George Washington University | Weida, Frank |
| 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 Michigan | Velz, Clarence |
| 1949 | USA | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | — |
| 1949 | USA | University of Chicago | — |
| 1949 | USA | Virginia Tech | Harshbarger, Boyd |
| ~1950 | Sweden | Stockholm University | — |
| 1950 | Israel | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | — |
| 1953 | England | Cambridge University, Statistics Lab | Wishart, John |
| 1953 | India | University of Pune | Huzurbazar, V. S. |
| 1955 | USA | University of California, Berkeley | Neyman, Jerzy |
| 1957 | USA | Harvard University | Cochran, William G. Mosteller, Frederick |
| 1957 | Australia | University of Sydney | Lancaster, Henry Oliver |
| 1958 | USA | University of Minnesota | — |
| 1959 | USA | Florida State University | Ralph A. Bradley |
| 1960 | USA | University of Wisconsin–Madison | George E. P. Box |
| 1962 | USA | University of Florida | Brandt, Alva Esmond |
| 1962 | USA | Texas A&M University | Hartley, Herman Otto |
| 1963 | USA | Yale University | Anscombe, Francis |
| 1963 | USA | Purdue University | — |
| 1964 | Bangladesh | Institute of Statistical Research and Training | Hussain, Q.M. |
| 1965 | USA | Princeton University | Tukey, John W. |
| 1965 | USA | University of Iowa | Hogg, Robert V. |
| 1966 | USA | Carnegie Mellon University | Morris H. DeGroot Gaver Jr, Donald P. |
| 1966 | Scotland | University of Glasgow | Aitchison, John Silvey, David |
| 1967 | Canada | University of Waterloo | Sprott, David A. |
| 1968 | USA | Pennsylvania State University | Bartoo, James |
| 1969 | India | Madras Christian College | Gift Siromoney |
| 1969 | Hong Kong | University of Hong Kong | Saw Swee Hock |
| 1970 | USA | Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington School of Public Health | — |
| 1973 | USA | Ohio State University | Whitney, D. Ransom |
| 1973 | Germany | Universität Dortmund | Eicker, Friedhelm |
| 1975 | India | Aligarh Muslim University | S.M. Ali |
| 1979 | Canada | University of Toronto | Donald A. S. Fraser |
| 1981 | India | Vidyasagar University | Gain, Anil Kumar |
| 1982 | Hong Kong | Chinese University of Hong Kong | Tong, Howell |
| 1984 | India | Banaras Hindu University | Singh, S.N. |
| 1985 | USA | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Sacks, Jerome |
| 1986 | USA | Northwestern University | Meyer Dwass |
| 1987 | USA | Rice University | James R. Thompson |
| 1988 | England | University of Oxford | Hinkley, D. V. |
| 1994 | New Zealand | The University of Auckland | Scott, Alastair Seber, George |
| 1996 | USA | University of Virginia School of Medicine | Harrell, Frank E. |
| 1997 | USA | University of Pittsburgh | Sampson, Allan R. |
| 1998 | USA | University of California, Los Angeles | Jan de Leeuw |