Who was she?

One of the most prominent Bayesian statisticians in the world, SusieBayarri studied at the University of Valencia, receiving Master (1979) and PhD (1984) degrees in Mathematics. She started her career in 1978 as an Assistant Professor at the University of Valencia, becoming Full Professor in 1998 and remaining at this university for the rest of her career. She became a Fulbright scholar in 1984, and frequently visited the US, becoming an adjunct professor at Duke University.

She had major leadership roles in statistical societies and was author or editor of �ve books and nearly 70 scienti�c research papers. Her brilliant and outstanding career is re�ected in the numerous honors and awards she received.

Susie was a wine and food connoisseur very active in the Verema blog from which she even received the prize for “best food critic” of the year.

1956—2014

Relevant contributions

Susie made major contributions to both the theory and methodology of Bayesian statistics, helping it become the prominent part of the scienti�c landscape that it is today. Her continuing long-term interests were selection models and weighted distributions; objective Bayesian methods; Bayesian analysis of queueing systems; Bayesian robustness; model criticism and p-values; model uncertainty and multiple comparisons; as well as calibration and validation of complex computer models.

Susie was a central �gure to the development of Statistics in Spain and the world. She was central to the research project “Consolider i-MATH” from 2006-2012, which involved over 300 research teams from Spanish Universities. She also served as the principal investigator of the Valencia node of BIOSTATNET, a network of 8 Spanish nodes including about 180 investigators inside and outside Spain. BIOSTATNET links Spanish researchers in biostatistics

and aims to promote multidisciplinary and integrative research in health sciences.

SusieBayarri

Origin Valencia, Spain

Known for

Professional

Associations

Bayesian statistics

• IBS. President Spanish

Region and SEB (2001-2003)

• ISBA. President in 1988

• ASA. Elected fellow in 1997

• ISI. Elected fellow in 1997

• IMS. Elected fellow in 2008

Alma mater

Institutions

University of Valencia

• Duke University

• University of Valencia

• Carnegie-Mellon University

• Purdue University

Awards • Frank Wilcoxon Award (2006)

• Jack Youden Prize (2008)

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry

1900—1978

Who was she?

Gertrude Cox interest in statistics began at Iowa State University where she earned a B.S. in Mathematics (1929) and a Master's degree in Statistics (1931) - �rst ever given by this university to a woman. Iowa State University awarded her with an honorary PhD in 1958. Cox was a pioneer in the applications of new statistical techniques. In 1940 she was elected chair of the Department of Experimental Statistics of the University of North Carolina, as a result of a footnote in a letter from Snedecor to the University in which he recommended �ve men, although he added “Of course, if you could consider a woman for this position, I would recommend Gertrude Cox from my team.”

Cox inspired and transmitted her passion to those who worked with her. Her colleagues’ respect is re�ected in the numerous awards and honors she received. Cox remained very active in professional societies up to her death in 1978.

Relevant contributions

One of Cox’s most signi�cant accomplishments was her role in founding the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina aiming to recruit bright talented statisticians. The Institute attracted high-tech industries to the area, improved the quality of life in the state and nowadays remains on the cutting edge.

Cox was founding member of the International Biometry Society (IBS) in 1947 and one of the �rst Honorary Life Members of IBS. She was as well the founding editor of IBS �agship journal, Biometrics, and held this editorship for 10 years.

In 1950, Gertrude Cox and William Cochran wrote the book Experimental Designs that became a required reference in the design and analysis of experiments. Both as a teacher and a consultant, she particularly emphasized randomization, replication, and experimental controls as essential procedures in performing experimental studies.

Experimental Designs book. Published in 1950 as a collaborative effort with W.G. Cochran. The book is the result of the Cox’s course that she began to teach in 1934 “Design of Experiments” and that would become renowned to follow Snedecor’s “Statistical Methods” course.

Gertrude MaryCox

Origin Dayton, Iowa, USA

Known for

Institutions

Experimental design

• University of North Carolina

• Research Triangle Institute

Professional

Associations

• IBS member. Founder and

President in 1968-69

• ASA. President in 1956

• Institute of Mathematical

Statistics

• Royal Statistical Society

Alma mater • Iowa State College

• University of California, Berkeley

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry

????—1984

Who was she?

Aleyamma George was an eminent statistician from India. She obtained her PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute in 1957, under the supervision of Professor C. R. Rao. George was instrumental in building the Department of Statistics at the University of Kerala, where she was Professor and Head.

After retiring from the University, she founded the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Trivandrum in 1977, a non-pro�t research and training centre covering all aspects of mathematics and statistics and served the inaugural director until she passed away in 1984.

Aleyamma was an excellent tennis player and an active member of society with a wide social circle.

Relevant contributions

George contributed signi�cantly to various areas of statistical applications, including medical sciences, agriculture, and, in particular, demography and vital statistics in India. Her work on medical sciences included analyses of data on oral cancer and vegetable poisoning. She conducted and analyzed data from a survey of over 40,000 households in Kerala under a Ford Foundation Project.

The last big (un�nished) project that Professor George worked on before her passing was on estimating yield and area under cultivation of four crops in Kerala, from the Department of Science and Technology in New Delhi.

Among her publications, her paper on inter-live-birth interval where she modeled the different stages between pregnancies of the same woman as gamma distributions was particularly in�uential. Different stages of inter-live-birth interval.

Diagrammatic representation of the different components of time between births of the same mother. Prof. George distinguish four stages: (1) Period of postpartum amenorrhea; (2) Waiting times spent in susceptible state (menstruating period); (3) Period of non-susceptibility; (4) period of pregnancy leading to the ( j+1)-th live birth.

Origin Kerala, India

Known for Demographical techniques

AleyammaGeorge

Alma mater

Institutions

University of Kerala

Centre for Mathematical Sciences (Kerala)

Legacy A Best Paper Award for publications in biostatistics, demography, epidemiology, and related areas was created in honor of Dr. George.

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry

FlorenceNightingale

1820—1910

Who was she?

Born in Florence in 1820 and named after the city of her birth, Florence Nightingale was skilled in mathematics and far ahead of her time in understanding the importance of health data.

Florence Nightingale is revered as the founder of modern nursing and as the person who conducted pioneering and brave work as a statistician during a period when women were a rare presence in such �eld. Nightingale, determined, intelligent and insightful, used her passion for statistics to save lives of soldiers during the Crimean war, and did groundbreaking work in data visualization that continues to be in�uential to this day. Tables and diagrams �ll the pages of Nightingale’s notes and records.

Nowadays, she still represents a source of inspiration and a research reference for academics worldwide.

Relevant contributions

Nightingale developed the use of infographics from statistical data. She created the Polar Area Diagram to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military hospital during the Crimean War.

The �gure, similar to a pie chart but more intricate, was divided into 12 slices representing months of the year, with the shaded area of each month’s slice proportional to the death rate and the color indicating the cause of death in each area of the diagram.

Thanks to this way of representing the data, she proved that the war wounds were not the main reason for death, but the poor sanitary conditions in hospitals. This information was crucial in convincing the parliament, the military authorities, and Queen Victoria about promoting hospital reform.

Polar Area Diagram. Areas of each slice are proportional to death rate by month. Colors represent the cause of death: deaths from preventable or mitigable Zymotic diseases (green); deaths from injuries (pink); and deaths from other causes (brown).

Origin Florence, Italy.

British nationality

Known for

Institutions

Professional

Associations

• Modern nursing

• Graphical representation

Alma mater

• Scutari Military Hospital

• King's College London

Institution of Protestant Deaconesses

at Kaiserswerth

Awards

• Royal Statistical Society. Elected 1st

female (1859)

• American Statistical Association.

Honorary member (1874)

• Royal Red Cross (1883)

• Lady of Grace of the order of St John (1904)

• Order of Merit (1907)

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry

1947—2014

Who was she?

Laura Pla graduated from Agricultural Engineering at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1974. She moved to Venezuela and studied at the Universidad Central de Venezuela where she earned in 1983 a MSc degree in Statistics and a PhD degree in Agricultural Sciences in 1988.

She was Professor in the Department of Environment and Agricultural Technology at Francisco de Miranda National University, in Coro, Venezuela. She also taught statistics at the Masters's Program in Public Administration and the Doctoral Program in Arts and Humanities at the Universidad de Rosario, Argentina.

Laura Pla was actively involved in the International Biometric Society. She was a founding member of the Central American and Caribbean region (RCAC), of the Venezuela group, and helped to consolidate the Argentina region. She was member of the Council (1994-1996, 2002-2009), served in the Awards Fund Committee (1993-1997) and in the Strategic Planning Committee (2000-2010).

Relevant contributions

Laura was an expert in biometry and dedicated to the applications in Ecology and Environmental Sciences. Her research interests were wide encompassing multivariate analysis, functional diversity, statistical ecology and her contributions helped on the progress of biometry. Laura was one of the few persons in Latin America to introduce statistical methods in ecological studies training many people in this area in Venezuela, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, among other countries.

Among the extensive list of publications and projects she participated, she played a key role in the development of the FDiversity software.

FDiversity is a free software developed by Fernando Casanoves, Julio Di Rienzo y Laura Pla, to estimate and analyse indexes of functional diversity. It also includes tools to compare the estimated index among a set of conditions using a built-in linear model facility.

Origin Argentina

Known for

Institutions

Professional

Associations

• Biodiversity

• Biometry

• Functional diversity

• IBS. Elected member of the Council (1994-1996, 2002-2009)

• ISI Committee on Women in Statistics

Laura Pla

Alma mater

Institutions

• Universidad de Buenos Aires

• Universidad Central de Venezuela

Francisco de Miranda National University

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry

1908—1995

Who was she?

Helen Newton Turner received her Bachelor in Architecture and her Doctoral Sciences Degree from the University of Sidney, her native city. In 1931, she took a position, as Ian Clunies Ross’ secretary, at the McMaster Animal Health Laboratory of the Council for Scienti�c and Industrial Research, now CSIRO, where she worked for the next 40 years.

Since she developed an interest in statistics, Ross arranged for her to travel to the United Kingdom and be trained by Frank Yates and Ronald Fisher.

She returned to CSIRO in 1939 as a consulting statistician to the agency's Division of Animal Health and Production, became a technical of�cer at the Division of Animal Health and Production in 1946 and was made senior principal research scientist of CSIRO's Division of Animal Genetics and led sheep breeding research in 1956.

Relevant contributions

Helen was a distinguished Genetist and Statistician. She was a leading authority on sheep genetics. She introduced objective, measurement-based approaches to sheep breeding and utilized quantitative genetics to improve wool quality and output from Merino sheep. From the late 1960s until the late 1980s, she travelled, assessing sheep development programs around the world.

The Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics established the Helen Newton Turner Medal in 1993.

Quantitative genetics in sheep breeding. When a book on sheep breeding is written by a Bachelor of Architecture and a champion Chinese table-tennis player one expects something special, and this book is indeed just that. This notable contribution to animal genetics describes work carried out in the Division of Animal Genetics of the Commonwealth Scienti�c and Industrial Research Organization in Australia.

Origin Sydney, Australia

Known for

Alma mater

Awards

Sheep genetics

University of Sydney

• Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal

• Order of the British Empire

• Order of Australia

• Farrer Memorial Medal

Helen AlmaNewton Turner

Institutions Commonwealth Scienti�c and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

CSIRO Archives – Image 710.0485

Pioneer women in statistics and biometry