Frances Wood (née Chick; 25 December 1883 – 12 October 1919) was an English chemist and statistician after whom the Wood medal of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

is named.

Life

Wood grew up in a large family, the daughter of lace dealer Samuel Chick and the sister of nutritionist

Harriette Chick Dame Harriette Chick DBE (6 January 1875 – 9 July 1977) was a British microbiologist, protein scientist, and nutritionist. She is best remembered for demonstrating the roles of sunlight and cod liver oil in preventing rickets. She also great ...

. She studied at

Notting Hill High School Notting Hill and Ealing High School is a private day school for girls aged 4–18 in Ealing, London. Founded in 1873, it is one of the 26 schools that make up the Girls' Day School Trust. It has a junior department of 310 girls (ages 4–11) and ...

from 1897 to 1903; she then read chemistry at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

from 1904 to 1908, earning second class honours there. From 1908 to 1912, she worked at the

Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, ...

as a research chemist, but during this period shifted her interests to

medical statistics Medical statistics (also health statistics) deals with applications of statistics to medicine and the health sciences, including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine, and clinical research. Medical statistics has been a recognized branc ...

. She became Grocers’ Research Scholar at Lister in 1912, was seconded to the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for Business and Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

for the war in 1914, and later moved to the

Ministry of Munitions The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis o ...

. She remained there until March 1919, when she resigned because of her pregnancy. She married Sydney Wood, an inspector of the Board of Education, in July 1911. Her daughter Barbara was born in September 1919 by

Caesarian section Caesarean section, also known as C-section, cesarean, or caesarean delivery, is the surgical procedure by which one or more babies are delivered through an incision in the mother's abdomen. It is often performed because vaginal delivery would ...

, but Frances died two weeks later of

sepsis Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage of sepsis is followed by suppression of the immune system. Common signs and s ...

Contributions

Wood's early works in chemistry involved

polymerisation In polymer chemistry, polymerization (American English), or polymerisation (British English), is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form polymer chains or three-dimensional networks. There are many form ...

and

fermentation Fermentation is a type of anaerobic metabolism which harnesses the redox potential of the reactants to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and organic end products. Organic molecules, such as glucose or other sugars, are catabolized and reduce ...

, under

Sir William Ramsay Sir William Ramsay (; 2 October 1852 – 23 July 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous element ...

and then

Arthur Harden Sir Arthur Harden, FRS (12 October 1865 – 17 June 1940) was a British biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1929 with Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin for their investigations into the fermentation of sugar and ferme ...

. As a medical statistician, she compared

food prices Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices affect producers and consumers of food. Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing and food di ...

with wages and rent, the generalisation of statistical correlations on death rates, and mortality rates for cancer and diabetes. Her work during the war remains unpublished, but two posthumous papers concern the effects of higher education on fertility, and the correlation between economic class and child mental development. Her sole-author paper on trends in wages in London 1900–1912 was read before a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 18 November 1913, which RSS president F. Y. Edgeworth commented made "an important contribution to the art of measuring changes in the value of money". She published one further article in the RSS journals, on the changes in the price of food experienced by the working and upper classes, in 1915, with no author affiliation.

Awards and honours

Wood became a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1913. She became a member of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

in 1917, and an officer in the order in 1918. Shortly after her death, the society raised funds for a biennial essay contest in her memory. The first recipient of the Frances Wood Memorial Prize was

Winifred Mackenzie Winifred Alice Mackenzie (21 November 1896 – 29 November 1954) was an English statistician, pupil of Arthur Bowley, first winner of the Royal Statistical Society’s Frances Wood Memorial Prize and Ronald Fisher’s first assistant in the Stat ...

for her article, "Changes in the Standard of Living in the United Kingdom, 1860-1914." In 2017, the society instituted their Wood medal "for excellent contributions to economic or social statistics".

Selected publications

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Frances 1883 births 1919 deaths English chemists English statisticians English women chemists British women statisticians People educated at Notting Hill & Ealing High School Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society Officers of the Order of the British Empire