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Egon Pearson

Egon Pearson.jpg
Born
Egon Sharpe Pearson

11 August 1895
Died 12 June 1980 (1980-06-13) (aged 84)
Nationality British
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Known for Neyman–Pearson lemma
Spouse(s)
  • Dorothy Eileen Jolly
  • Margaret Theodisia Scott
Children
  • Judith Pearson
  • Sarah Pearson
Parents
Awards Weldon Memorial Prize (1935)
Guy Medal (Gold, 1955)
Scientific career
Fields Statistics
Institutions University College London
Doctoral students George E. P. Box
Bhaskar Kumar Ghosh
Pao-Lu Hsu
Norman Lloyd Johnson

Egon Sharpe Pearson CBE FRS (11 August 1895 – 12 June 1980) was one of three children of Karl Pearson and Maria, née Sharpe, and, like his father, a leading British statistician.

Career

He 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. Pearson 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.

He 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.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1966. His candidacy citation read:

Known throughout the world as co-author of the Neyman–Pearson theory of testing statistical hypotheses, and responsible for many important contributions to problems of statistical inference and methodology, especially in the development and use of the likelihood ratio criterion. Has played a leading role in furthering the applications of statistical methods — for example, in industry, and also during and since the war, in the assessment and testing of weapons.

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)
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