stained glass window Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...

commemorating British statistician, geneticist, and

eugenicist Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetics, genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human Phenotype, phenotypes by ...

R. A. Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...

was installed in the dining hall of

Gonville and Caius College Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges an ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, England in 1989. It depicts a 7x7

Latin square Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion o ...

, as featured in Fisher's ''

The Design of Experiments ''The Design of Experiments'' is a 1935 book by the English statistician Ronald Fisher about the design of experiments and is considered a foundational work in experimental design. Among other contributions, the book introduced the concept of th ...

''. The idea for the window came from a college fellow,

A. W. F. Edwards Anthony William Fairbank Edwards, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1935) is a British statistician, geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Ed ...

, and the execution was the work of Maria McClafferty. At first there were two windows, the other featuring a

Venn diagram A Venn diagram is a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between set (mathematics), sets, popularized by John Venn (1834–1923) in the 1880s. The diagrams are used to teach elementary set theory, and to illustrate simple ...

to commemorate

John Venn John Venn, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, FSA (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing Venn diagrams, which are used in l ...

, both installed in time for the 1990 centenary of Fisher's birth. In 1992, the set was expanded with four more windows representing scientific achievements with links to the college: a DNA spiral celebrating

Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the Nucleic acid doub ...

, and windows celebrating

Charles Scott Sherrington Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was a British neurophysiology, neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a ...

, George Green and

James Chadwick Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English nuclear physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired t ...

. In June 2020, during the global

George Floyd protests The George Floyd protests were a series of protests, riots, and demonstrations against police brutality that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests and civil unrest began in Minneapolis as Reactions to the mu ...

, the college's Gate of Honour was spray-painted in protest at the installation and at Fisher's association with

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

, and the college announced on 24 June that the window would be removed because of Fisher's tarnished reputation. The removal was subsequently carried out. The issue of the Fisher window will continue to be addressed in a working group and a public conference organized by the college to consider wider issues of diversity and representation.

Criticism

Critics have pointed out that the principles applied in this case, if applied consistently, might justify the removal of memorials to other prominent figures such as

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...

, an economist and co-founder of Cambridge Eugenics Society.

References

1989 establishments in England 2020 disestablishments in England Stained glass windows Monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent ma ...

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