Abstract
R.A. Fisher was born in London on 17 February 1890, the son of a fine-art auctioneer. His twin brother was still-born. At Harrow School he distinguished himself in mathematics, despite being handicapped by poor eyesight which prevented him working by artificial light. His teachers used to instruct by ear, and Fisher developed a remarkable capacity for pursuing complex mathematical arguments in his head. This manifested itself in later life in his ability to reach a conclusion whilst forgetting the argument; to handle complex geometrical trains of thought; and to develop and report essentially mathematical arguments in English (only for students to have to reconstruct the mathematics later).
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Selected Works
1915. Frequency distribution of the values of the correlation coefficient in samples from an indefinitely large population. Biometrika 10, 507–21.
1918. The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 52, 399–433.
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1971–4. Collected Papers of R.A. Fisher. Ed. J.H. Bennett. Adelaide: University of Adelaide, 5 vols.
Bibliography
Box, Joan Fisher. 1979. R.A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist. New York: Wiley.
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© 1990 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Edwards, A.W.F. (1990). Ronald Aylmer Fisher. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) Time Series and Statistics. The New Palgrave. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20865-4_10
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