John Ashworth NelderFRS | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1924-10-08)8 October 1924 Brushford, Somerset, England |
| Died | 7 August 2010(2010-08-07) (aged 85) Luton, Bedfordshire, England |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Known for | Generalized linear models, analysis of complexexperimental designs,Nelder–Mead algorithm,GLIM,GenStat |
| Awards | Fellow of the Royal Society (1976) Guy Medal (Silver, 1977) (Gold, 2005) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics |
| Institutions | National Vegetable Research Station Rothamsted Experimental Station Imperial College London |
John Ashworth NelderFRS (8 October 1924 – 7 August 2010) was a British statistician known for his contributions toexperimental design,analysis of variance,computational statistics, andstatistical theory.
Nelder's work was influential in statistics. While leading research atRothamsted Experimental Station, Nelder developed and supervised the updating of thestatistical software packagesGLIM andGenStat: Both packages are flexiblehigh-level programming languages that allow statisticians to formulatelinear models concisely.[1] GLIM influenced later environments forstatistical computing such asS-PLUS andR. Both GLIM and GenStat have powerful facilities for theanalysis of variance forblockexperiments, an area where Nelder made many contributions.
Instatistical theory, Nelder proposed thegeneralized linear model together withRobert Wedderburn. Nelder and Wedderburn formulated generalized linear models as a way of unifying various other statistical models, includinglinear regression,logistic regression andPoisson regression.[2] They proposed aniteratively reweighted least squaresmethod formaximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters.
Instatistical inference, Nelder (along withGeorge Barnard andA. W. F. Edwards) emphasized the importance of thelikelihood indata analysis, promoting this "likelihood approach" as an alternative tofrequentist andBayesian statistics.
Inresponse-surfaceoptimization, Nelder andRoger Mead proposed theNelder–Mead simplex heuristic, widely used in engineering and statistics.
Born inBrushford, nearDulverton, Somerset, Nelder was educated atBlundell's School andSidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics.
Nelder's appointments included Head of the Statistics Section at theNational Vegetable Research Station,Wellesbourne, from 1951 to 1968 and head of the Statistics Department atRothamsted Experimental Station from 1968 to 1984.[3] During his time at Wellesbourne he spent a year (1965–1966) at the Waite Institute in Adelaide, South Australia, where he worked with Graham Wilkinson on Genstat. He held an appointment as visiting professor atImperial College London from 1972 onwards.
He was responsible, withMax Nicholson andJames Ferguson-Lees, for debunking theHastings Rarities – sightings of a series of rare birds, preserved by ataxidermist and provided with bogus histories.[4]
Nelder died on 7 August 2010 inLuton and Dunstable Hospital, taken there after a fall at home, which was incidental to the cause of death.[5]
Nelder was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1976[6] and received theRoyal Statistical Society'sGuy Medal in Gold in 2005. He was also the recipient of the inaugural Karl Pearson Prize of theInternational Statistical Institute, withPeter McCullagh, "for their monograph Generalized Linear Models (1983)".[7]
As tribute on his eightieth birthday, afestschriftMethods and Models in Statistics: In Honour of Professor John Nelder, FRS was edited by Niall Adams, Martin Crowder, David J Hand & Dave Stephens, Imperial College Press (2004).[8]
The first annual John Nelder memorial lecture was held at Imperial College London, on 8 March 2012, as part of the Mathematics department Colloquium series. The lecture was given by Nelder's long term co-author,Peter McCullagh. An interview[9] with McCullagh, about statistical modelling, includes some reminiscences about Nelder.
