Peter Armitage

CBE 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 ...

(15 June 1924 – 14 February 2024) was 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 ...

who specialised in

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 ...

Life and career

Peter Armitage was born in

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confl ...

, and was educated at Huddersfield College, before going on to read mathematics at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

. Armitage belonged to the generation of mathematicians who came to maturity in the Second World War. He joined the weapons procurement agency, the

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed on 1 August 1939 by the Ministry of Supply Act 1939 ( 2 & 3 Geo. 6. c. 38) to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Ministe ...

where he worked on statistical problems with George Barnard. After the war he resumed his studies and then worked as a statistician for the Medical Research Council from 1947 to 1961. From 1961 to 1976, he was Professor of Medical Statistics at the

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public university, public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a constituent college, member institution of the University of London that specialises in public hea ...

where he succeeded

Austin Bradford Hill Sir Austin Bradford Hill (8 July 1897 – 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. ...

. His main work there was on

sequential analysis In statistics, sequential analysis or sequential hypothesis testing is statistical analysis where the sample size is not fixed in advance. Instead data is evaluated as it is collected, and further sampling is stopped in accordance with a pre-defi ...

. He moved to Oxford as Professor of Biomathematics and became Professor of Applied Statistics and head of the new Department of Statistics, retiring in 1990. He was president 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. ...

in 1982–4. He was president of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics in 1990–1991, and editor-in-chief of the ''Encyclopedia of Biostatistics''. Armitage lived in

Wallingford, Oxfordshire Wallingford () is a historic market town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, north of Reading, south of Oxford and north west of Henley-on-Thames. Although belonging to the historic county of Berkshire, it ...

, and died on 14 February 2024, at the age of 99.

References

* Basic career information is in the entry in ** ''Who's Who 2005'' * There are recollections in ** Peter Armitage " /dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2004.00064.x Purposes, methods, philosophies, ''Significance'' Volume 1 Issue 4 Page 170 - December 2004

External links

A brief biography at wiley.co.uk (publisher of the Encyclopedia of Biostatics)
* There is a photograph at the
Peter Armitage
on th

page 1924 births 2024 deaths Academics of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English statisticians Fellows of St Peter's College, Oxford People educated at Huddersfield New College Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society British biostatisticians People from Huddersfield {{UK-mathematician-stub