1890-1962

British Geneticist

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher was a British geneticist and statistician. To create genetic experiments that yielded greater results with less effort, he pioneered the use of statistics in experimentation, and came up with the now widely used concepts of variance and randomization.

Fisher graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.A. in astronomy in 1912. While there, he gained an interest in the theory of errors in astronomical observations, which eventually led him to a career in statistical research.

In 1919, he accepted a position as statistician for the Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station near Harpenden, Hertfordshire. His work on plant-breeding experiments combined biology and statistics. At Rothamsted, he developed a new technique by which scientists could vary different elements in an experiment to determine the probability that those variations would yield different results. He published his findings in the...