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Egon Sharpe Pearson (11 August 1895 – 12 June 1980) was one of three children of Karl Pearson and Maria, née Sharpe, and, like his father, a British
statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...
.


Career

Pearson was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded his father as professor of statistics at University College London and as editor of the journal '' Biometrika''. He is best known for development of the Neyman–Pearson lemma of statistical hypothesis testing. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1948. Pearson was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1955–56, and was awarded its Guy Medal in gold in 1955. He was appointed a CBE in 1946. Pearson was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in March 1966. His candidacy citation read:


Family life

Pearson married Eileen Jolly in 1934 and the couple had two daughters, Judith and Sarah. Eileen died of pneumonia in 1949. Pearson subsequently married Margaret Theodosia Scott in 1967 and the couple lived in Cambridge until Margaret's death in 1975. Pearson moved to West Lavington in Sussex and lived there until his death in 1980.


Works

* ''On the Use and Interpretation of certain Test Criteria for the Purposes of Statistical Inference'' (coauthor Jerzy Neyman in '' Biometrika'', 1928) * ''The History of statistics in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries'' (1929). Commented version of a series of conference by his father. * ''On the Problem of the Most Efficient Tests of Statistical Hypotheses'' (coauthor Jerzy Neyman, 1933) * * ''Karl Pearson : an appreciation of some aspects of his life and work'' (1938) * * ''Studies in the history of statistics and probability'' (1969, coauthor Maurice George Kendall)


Collections

University College London holds the archive of Pearson, which was acquired in four separate accessions between 1980 and 2013. The collection includes material relating to Pearson's professional life such as lecture notes, draft publications, correspondence and papers relating to the Biometrika journal.


References


External links


Egon Sharpe Pearson Papers
held at University College London
Obituary by Herbert A. David
(retrieved 1 August 2017)

(retrieved 1 August 2017) {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearson, Egon Sharpe 1895 births 1980 deaths People from Hampstead Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of University College London Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English mathematicians English statisticians Fellows of the Royal Society People educated at Winchester College Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society 20th-century British mathematicians Fellows of the Econometric Society British mathematical statisticians