Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher formalized and extended the field of statistics and revolutionized the concept of experimental design. He worked for 14 years as a research statistician and later held professorships in genetics, another field to which he made significant contributions. Fisher wrote about 300 papers and seven books during his prodigious career.

The youngest of seven children, Ronald Fisher was born on February 17, 1890, in a northern suburb of London. His father, George Fisher, was a partner in a fine arts auction firm. Because of poor eyesight, the young Fisher was not allowed to read or write under artificial light. Consequently, he rarely took notes at lectures he attended, and he preferred to solve problems mentally rather than on paper. He developed a facility for visualizing complex geometrical relationships in his mind. This ability later proved fruitful, as his geometrical interpretation of statistics led him to previously unattainable results.

In...