The Professor and the Student,Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) and William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937): Careers of two giants in mathematical statistics
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online May, 2015
The Professor and the Student,Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) and William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937): Careers of two giants in mathematical statistics
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher and William Sealy Gosset were responsible for laying the foundations of statistical inference. Tests that bear their names are used by students and researchers in a wide variety of scientific disciplines. Similar and different in many respects, their lives and careers are the subject of this essay. They were not teacher and pupil; in fact the student was 14 years older than the professor. Their careers did not require them to interact with one another much but they were aware of one another’s work. Although Sir Ronald is assigned the role of the professor, his success as a teacher was impaired by his inability to understand the limitations of his students. Meanwhile Gosset was forced to publish his work under the pseudonym ‘Student' in order to make contributions to the field of mathematical statistics. Both men are undisputed giants in the field of statistics and we celebrate their achievements as much as we try to understand their struggles.
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