Founders of Statistics

This list is composed by the ISI Committee on the History of Statistics. It is ordered by surname/last name.

Founders of Statistics

Life / Name / Famous for

  • 1719-1722 / Gottfried Achenwall / coined German word Statistik
  • 1927-2009 / Hirotugo Akaike / model selection
  • 801-873 / Abu Al-Kindi / statistical cryptography
  • 1667-1735 / John Arbuthnot / test of hypothesis of gender ratio
  • 1701-1761 / Thomas Bayes / inverse probability
  • 1700-1782 / Daniel Bernoulli / logarithmic utility
  • 1878-1956 / Felix Bernstein / statistical analysis of blood group inheritance
  • 1821-1883 / Louis-Adolphe Bertillon / demography
  • 1945-2010 / Julian Besag / spatial lattice models
  • 1784-1846 / Friedrich Bessel / probable error
  • 1919-2010 / David Blackwell / estimation, game theory
  • 1711-1787 / Roger Boscovich / least absolute deviations
  • 1919-2013 / George Box / time series
  • 1811-1863 / Auguste Bravais / theoretical regression
  • 1789-1857 / Augustin Louis Cauchy / minimizing largest error
  • 1912-1979 / Jerome Cornfield / clinical trials
  • 1900-1978 / Gertrude Cox / experimental design
  • 1924-now / David Cox / proportional hazards
  • 1893-1985 / Harald Cramér / mathematical basis of statistics
  • 1906-1985 / Bruno de Finetti / Bayesian statistics
  • 1900-1993 / W. Edwards Deming / quality control
  • 1938-now / Bradley Efron / bootstrap
  • 1897-1883 / William Farr / statistical visualization, medical statistics
  • 1890-1962 / Ronald Fisher / likelihood, significance test
  • 1768-1830 / Joseph Fourier / testing difference of two proportions
  • 1822-1911 / Francis Galton / empirical regression
  • 1777-1855 / Carl Friedrich Gauss / Gauss-Markov theorem, delta method
  • 1809-1890 / Jules Gavarret / fixed significance level testing in medicine
  • 1884-1965 / Corrado Gini / index of inequality
  • 1908-1955 / Meyer Abraham Girschick / decision theory
  • 1620-1674 / John Graunt / demography
  • 1802-1866 / André-Michel Guerry / criminal statistics, statistical graphics
  • 1891-1966 / Emil Julius Gumbel / statistics of extremes
  • 1911-1999 / Trygve Haavelmo / foundations of econometrics
  • 1926-1974 / Jaroslav Hájek / asymptotics
  • 1656-1742 / Edmund Halley / actuarial science
  • 1910-1990 / Morris Hansen / sampling
  • 1897-1991 / Austin Bradford Hill / randomized clinical trials
  • 1895-1973 / Harold Hotelling / confidence intervals
  • 1891-1989 / Harold Jeffreys / Bayes factors
  • 1835-1882 / Stanley Jevons / index numbers
  • 1884-1961 / Truman Kelley / coefficient of reliability
  • 1838-1919 / Anders Kiaer / survey sampling
  • 1903-1987 / Andrei Kolmogorov / optimal estimation, time series
  • 1919-2013 / Danie Krige / spatial estimation
  • 1749-1827 / Pierre-Simon Laplace / inverse probability, ratio estimation
  • 1924-2000 / Lucien Le Cam / asymptotics
  • 1752-1833 / André-Marie Legendre / least squares
  • 1917-2009 / Erich Lehmann / testing
  • 1837-1914 / William Lexis / time series
  • 1923-2013 / Dennis Lindley / decision theory
  • 1893-1972 / P. C. Mahalanobis / multivariate distance
  • 1895-1933 / Lucien March / visualization of statistical distributions
  • 1930-2000 / Georges Matheron / geostatistics, mathematical morphology
  • 1723-1762 / Tobias Mayer / combining astronomical measurements
  • 1924-2010 / John Nelder / generalized linear model
  • 1894-1981 / Jerzy Neyman / hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, spatial cluster models
  • 1820-1910 / Florence Nightingale / data visualization
  • 1924-2016 / Ingram Olkin / meta-analysis
  • 1895-1980 / Egon Pearson / hypothesis testing
  • 1857-1936 / Karl Pearson / chi-square test, P-value
  • 1623-1687 / William Petty / estimation
  • 1897-1993 / E.J.G. Pitman / invariant and equivariant estimators
  • 1723-1791 / Richard Price / demography
  • 1796-1874 / Adolphe Quetelet / anthropometry
  • 1920-now / C.R. Rao / optimal unbiased estimation
  • 1839-1914 / Charles Saunders Peirce / randomized experimentation
  • 1917-1971 / Leonard Jimmie Savage / Bayesian statistics
  • 1917-1988 / Elizabeth Scott / spatial cluster models
  • 1876-1937 / William Sealy Gosset / t-test
  • 1793-1859 / Lemuel Shattuck / public health
  • 1891-1967 / Walter Shewhart / quality control
  • 1710-1761 / Thomas Simpson / least deviation regression
  • 1878-1939 / Kirstine Smith / optimal design of experiments 1918
  • 1863-1945 / Charles Spearman / factor analysis
  • 1920-2016 / Charles Stein / shrinkage estimation
  • 1838-1910 / Thorvald Thiele / analysis of variance
  • 1915-2000 / John Tukey / robust statistics, fast Fourier transform, exploratory data
  • 1912-1954 / Alan Turing / cryptography
  • 1883-1953 / Richard von Mises / directional data
  • 1902-1950 / Abraham Wald / sequential analysis
  • 1891-1983 / Helen Walker / history of statistical education
  • 1717-1783 / Pehr Wargentin / demography
  • 1947-1975 / Robert Wedderburn / generalized linear model
  • 1892-1965 / Frank Wilcoxon / rank tests
  • 1816-1894 / Theodor Wittstein / coined German term mathematische Statistik 1863
  • 1871-1951 / Udny Yule / time series