Egon Pearson

Who was Egon Pearson?

Egon Sharpe Pearson, CBE FRS was the only son of Karl Pearson, and like his father, a leading British statistician.

He went to Winchester School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded his father as professor of statistics at University College London and as editor of the journal Biometrika. Pearson is best known for development of the Neyman-Pearson lemma of statistical hypothesis testing.

He was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1955–56, and was awarded its Guy Medal in Gold in 1955. He was awarded a CBE in 1946.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in Mar 1966. His candidacy citation read: "Known throughout the world as co-author of the Neyman-Pearson theory of testing statistical hypotheses, and responsible for many important contributions to problems of statistical inference and methodology, especially in the development and use of the likelihood ratio criterion. Has played a leading role in furthering the applications of statistical methods — for example, in industry, and also during and since the war, in the assessment and testing of weapons."