Ronald Aylmer Fisher Biography

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World of Sociology on Ronald Aylmer Fisher

A statistician who injected fresh ideas into quantitative biological experiments and a pioneer in the theory of genetics, Ronald Aylmer Fisher is the author of Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925). This "bible" of applied statistics, which remained in print for fifty years, is considered so difficult to read that a colleague once remarked, "no student should attempt to read it unless he had read it before."

Fisher, a surviving twin and the youngest of seven children, was born in the London suburb of East Finchley, England, on February 17, 1890. He was a precocious child. Supposedly, when he was about three years old, he questioned the process of successively dividing the number 2. He finally decided, on his own, that "half of a sixteenth must be thirty-toof."

During his school years at Stanmore Park and Harrow, Fisher developed the habit of seeing complex geometrical problems in his mind. His poor eyesight prevented him from reading or writing under artificial light. So he learned to listen to lectures without taking notes and to solve problems by visualizing them. He earned a scholarship to Cambridge in 1909, studying mathematics and theoretical physics with interests in biometry and genetics. Before graduating in 1912, he published his first paper, detailing the fitting of frequency curves. Fisher worked at various jobs after Cambridge until he joined the Mercantile and General Investment Company in London (1913-1915) and then became a public school teacher (1915-1919). During this period, he published a paper on statistics and two on eugenics, the science of using selective mating to improve the human race. Convinced that lower socioeconomic classes were less talented than his own privileged class, he grew concerned because the former were producing children at a greater rate than the latter. That may have influenced the decision of Fisher and his wife, Ruth Eileen Guinness, whom he married in 1917, to have eight children. The couple later separated.

Although he was apparently ineffective as a teacher, Fisher enjoyed a reputation as a brilliant mathematician, even if he could not explain his ideas to others, and he received two promising job offers in 1919. One was at Galton Laboratory in University College, London, to work with statistician Karl Pearson, with whom Fisher later developed a lifelong feud. Instead, Fisher joined the Rothamsted Experimental Station, north of London. His first task was to analyze some sixty-six years of statistical data, which he did over the next 14 years as well as analyze the station's plant breeding experiments. In plant experiments, Fisher tried to find ways to produce more and better data with less time and effort, a study which led to his theory of randomization. Inaccurate data often resulted from inadvertently biased material selection in experiments. Fisher said that all material units in an experiment must be randomly selected samples from the entire population they are intended to represent. That would lighten the effects of variability in experimental materials.

Fisher's work with plant-breeding experiments led to the publication of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930). Pursuing his interest in genetics by breeding small animals even in his own home, Fisher concluded that Charles Darwin's natural selection model for evolutionary change was superior to genetic mutation.

In 1933, Fisher left Rothamsted for University College, where he occupied the Galton Chair of Eugenics for ten years. He established a blood-typing department in 1935 and also published Design of Experiments , another statistical landmark. Keenly interested in human genetics, Fisher held alarmist views about the future of humankind. Regarded as an authentic genius even by his dissenters, to whom he was invariably hostile, Fisher nonetheless was seen by many as quirkish and reactionary and a master of the unbarbed phrase.

Fisher returned to Cambridge in 1943 as Balfour Professor of Genetics until his formal retirement in 1957. President of the Royal Society (1952-1954), Fisher was knighted in 1952. In the late 1950s, he published several articles on his theory of a cause-and-effect relationship between smoking and cancer. In all, he wrote some three hundred papers and seven books during his career. In 1959, Fisher moved to Adelaide, Australia, where he became a statistical researcher for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a group founded by several former students. He died there on July 19, 1962.