Major Greenwood | |
|---|---|
 Major Greenwood | |
| Born | (1880-08-09)9 August 1880 Shoreditch, London, England |
| Died | 5 October 1949(1949-10-05) (aged 69) |
| Awards | Weldon Memorial Prize(1926) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Epidemiology |
Major GreenwoodFRS[1] (9 August 1880 – 5 October 1949) was a Britishepidemiologist andstatistician.
Major Greenwood junior was born inShoreditch inLondon's East End, the only child of Major Greenwood, aphysician ingeneral practice there ("Major" was his forename, not a military rank.) and his wife Annie, daughter ofPeter Lodwick Burchell,F.R.C.S.,M.B.,L.S.A.[2] The Greenwood family is recorded back to the twelfth century in the person of Wyomarus Greenwode, of Greenwode Leghe, nearHeptonstall, Yorkshire, caterer to theEmpress Maude in 1154.[2] Greenwood was educated on the classical side atMerchant Taylors' School and went on to study medicine atUniversity College London and theLondon Hospital. On qualifying in 1904 he worked for a time as assistant to his father but after a few months he gave upclinical practice for good.
He went to work as a demonstrator for the physiologistLeonard Hill (father of the future statisticianAustin Bradford Hill) at theLondon Hospital Medical College. Leonard Hill recalled, "By recognising the ability of a student with nothing behind him to show his worth and by appointing him my assistant I may claim to have started Greenwood on his career." While Greenwood made a good start in physiological research he was already drawn to statistics; his first paper inBiometrika appeared in 1904. After a period of study withKarl Pearson he was appointed statistician to theLister Institute in 1910. There he worked on a wide range of problems, including a study of the effectiveness ofinoculation with the statisticianUdny Yule. In theFirst World War Greenwood first served in theRoyal Army Medical Corps but then was put in charge of a medical research unit at theMinistry of Munitions. There he investigated the health problems associated withfactory work, one result of which was an influential study of accidents which he produced with Yule. In 1919 Greenwood joined the newly createdMinistry of Health with responsibility for medical statistics. He co-authored a number of papers (see publications) withEthel Newbold during his tenure there (and wrote a touching obituary for her on her early death in 1933).[3] In 1928 he became the first professor ofEpidemiology andVital Statistics at theLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he stayed until he retired in 1945. He established a group of researchers, of whom the most important wasAustin Bradford Hill. Greenwood played the same role in A. B. Hill’s career as Hill’s father had played in his.
TheRoyal Society awarded theBuchanan Medal to Greenwood in 1927,[4] and elected him aFellow in 1928.[1] The election certificate stated
Engaged in medical research. Has applied the statistical method to the elucidation of many problems of physiology, pathology, hygiene and epidemiology. Is the author, or joint author, of more than sixty papers dealing with these applications, including important contributions to the experimental study of epidemiology (Journ Hyg, 24, 1925, Greenwood and Topley; ibid, 25, 1926, Greenwood, Newbold, Topley and Wilson). Has done much to encourage and develop the use of modern statistical methods by medical laboratory investigators, and, as Chairman of the Medical Research Council's Statistical Committee, to secure the adequate planning and execution of field investigations.
He was electedPresident of the Royal Statistical Society in 1934[5] and awarded itsGuy Medal in Gold in 1945.
Greenwood produced a large body of research, was the first holder of important positions in modernmedical statistics and wrote extensively on the history of his subject, but asAustin Bradford Hill wrote in his obituary, "in the future, it may well indeed seem that one of his greatest contributions, if not the greatest, lay merely in his outlook, in his statistical approach to medicine, then a new approach and one long regarded with suspicion. And he fought this fight continuously and honestly—for logic for accuracy, for ‘little sums.’"
His name is attached to the Greenwood formula for thevariance orstandard error (SE) of theKaplan–Meier estimator of survival.[6][7][8]
A statistical method invented by Major Greenwood in a statistical study of infectious diseases[9] is still used in present-day research. TheGreenwood statistic was used to discover that there is some kind of order in the placement of genes on the chromosomes of living things[10] and this inspired a new look at epigenetics, which is now considered to be as important as genetics in how living organisms develop and evolve.
Greenwood lived atLoughton, where among his neighbours wereSir Frank Baines,Millais Culpin, andLeonard Erskine Hill.
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