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Sir Ronald Fisher window

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Stained glass window in the dining hall of Caius College, Cambridge, commemorating Ronald Fisher and representing a Latin square

A stained glass window commemorating British statistician, geneticist, and eugenicist R. A. Fisher was installed in the dining hall of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, England in 1989. It depicts a 7x7 Latin square, as featured in Fisher's The Design of Experiments.[1] The window is part of a larger work by Maria McClafferty.[2] Initially there were two windows, the other featuring a Venn diagram to commemorate John Venn, both installed in time for the 1990 centenary of Fisher's birth. In 1992 this was expanded with four more windows: a DNA spiral celebrating Francis Crick, and windows celebrating Charles Scott Sherrington, George Green and James Chadwick.[3][4]

In 2020, during the global George Floyd protests, the college's Gate of Honour was spray-painted in protest of the installation and of Fisher's association with eugenics,[5] and the college announced that the window would be removed because of Fisher's tarnished reputation.[6]

References

  1. ^ Edwards, A. W. F. (2006). "Statisticians in stained glass houses". Significance. 3 (4): 182–183. doi:10.1111/j.1740-9713.2006.00203.x. ISSN 1740-9713.
  2. ^ Andersen, Lars Døvling (2013). "Latin squares". In Wilson, Robin; Watkins, John J. (eds.). Combinatorics: Ancient & Modern. Oxford University Press. pp. 251–284. ISBN 9780191630620. See in particular p. 257.
  3. ^ Edwards, A. W. F. (Anthony William Fairbank), 1935- (2004). Cogwheels of the mind : the story of Venn diagrams. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-8018-7434-3. OCLC 52258357.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Anthony Edwards (1 September 2005). "Caius Stained Glass". Once a Caian. No. 2.
  5. ^ "Sir Ronald Fisher memorial in Cambridge targeted by activists". BBC News. 12 June 2020. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  6. ^ "Cambridge college to remove window commemorating eugenicist". the Guardian. 27 June 2020. Retrieved 27 June 2020.


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