Mathematician:William Sealy Gosset
Mathematician
English statistician most famous for Student's $t$-distribution.
Had a close friendship with Karl Pearson and Ronald Aylmer Fisher.
Nationality
English
History
- Born: 13 June 1876 in Canterbury, Kent, England
- Died: 16 October 1937 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
Theorems and Definitions
Definitions of concepts named for William Sealy Gosset can be found here.
Also known as
William Sealy Gosset's employer, Guinness, had previously had trade secrets disclosed within academic papers. Because of this, they disallowed entirely their employees from publishing academic papers, irrespective of their content.
However, after much convincing that his results regarding the $t$-distribution and $t$-test were of high mathematical importance, and that they were of no direct commercial use to rival breweries, he was allowed to publish.
To avoid the attention of other employees, Guinness allowed Gosset to publish under his pen name Student.
Sources
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "William Sealy Gosset": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Gosset, William Sealy (1876-1937)
- 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Student