Sir Adrian Smith | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 63rd President of the Royal Society | |
| Assumed office 30 November 2020 | |
| Preceded by | Venki Ramakrishnan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith (1946-09-09)9 September 1946 (age 79) Dawlish, Devon, England |
| Residence | UK |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge University College London |
| Awards | Guy Medal (Bronze, 1977) (Silver, 1993) (Gold, 2016) |
| Fields | Statistics |
| Institutions | Imperial College London Queen Mary, University of London |
| Thesis | Bayesian inference for the linear model (1972) |
| Doctoral advisor | Dennis Lindley[1] |
| Doctoral students | Chris Holmes David Spiegelhalter Mike West |
Sir Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith,PRS (born 9 September 1946) is a British statistician who is chief executive of theAlan Turing Institute and president of theRoyal Society.[2]
Smith was born on 9 September 1946 inDawlish in Devon. He was educated atSelwyn College, Cambridge, andUniversity College London, where his PhD supervisor wasDennis Lindley.
From 1977 until 1990, he was professor of statistics and head of department of mathematics at theUniversity of Nottingham. He was subsequently atImperial College, London, where he was head of the mathematics department. Smith is a former deputy vice-chancellor of theUniversity of London and became vice-chancellor of the university on 1 September 2012.[3] He stood down from the role in August 2018 to become the director of theAlan Turing Institute.[4][5]
Smith is a member of the governing body of theLondon Business School. He served on the Advisory Council for theOffice for National Statistics from 1996 to 1998, was statistical advisor to the Nuclear Waste Inspectorate from 1991 to 1998 and was advisor onOperational Analysis to the Ministry of Defence from 1982 to 1987.
He is a former president of theRoyal Statistical Society. He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society in 2001. His FRS citation included "his diverse contributions toBayesian statistics. His monographs are the most comprehensive available and his work has had a major impact on the development of monitoring tools for clinicians."
Instatistical theory, Smith is a proponent ofBayesian statistics andevidence-based practice—a general extension ofevidence-based medicine into all areas of public policy. With Antonio Machi, he translatedBruno de Finetti's Theory of Probability into English. He wrote an influential paper in 1990 along withAlan E. Gelfand, which drew attention to the significance of theGibbs sampler technique for Bayesiannumerical integration problems. He was also co-author of the seminal paper on theparticle filter (Gordon, Salmond and Smith, 1993).
Inmathematics andstatistics education, Smith led the team which produced theSmith Report on secondary mathematics education in the United Kingdom.
In April 2008, Smith was appointed as director general of science and research at theDepartment for Innovation, Universities and Skills (since merged with other departments to form the UK'sBEIS). He took up his post in September 2008. His annual remuneration for this role was £160,000.[6]
Smith wasknighted in the2011 New Year Honours.[7] In 2023 he was a guest onThe Life Scientific onBBC Radio 4.[8]
In 2011, Smith was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science fromPlymouth University in 2015, an Honorary Doctorate of Science fromOhio State University,[9] and in 2020, an Honorary Doctorate Honoris Causa fromFederal University of Rio de Janeiro. He also was awarded Honorary Doctorates from City University,University of Loughborough, Queen Mary andUniversity of London.
| Business positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Director and CEO ofAlan Turing Institute 2018–current | Incumbent |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by | 49thVice-Chancellor of the University of London 2012–2018 | Succeeded by |
| New title | 1st Principal ofQueen Mary University of London 1998–2008 | Succeeded by Philip Ogden (acting) Simon Gaskell |
| Government offices | ||
| Preceded by | Director General for Knowledge and Innovation ofDepartment for Business, Innovation and Skills 2008–2012 | Succeeded by |
| Professional and academic associations | ||
| Preceded by | 63rd President of theRoyal Society 2020–present | Incumbent |
