Peter Armitage (statistician)

This article is about the statistician. For the Coronation Street actor, see Peter Armitage (actor).

Peter Armitage (born 15 July 1924) is a statistician specialising in medical statistics.

Peter Armitage attended Huddersfield College and went on to read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Armitage belonged to the generation of mathematicians who came to maturity in the Second World War. He joined the weapons procurement agency, the Ministry of Supply where he worked on statistical problems with George Barnard.

After the war he resumed his studies and then worked as a statistician for the Medical Research Council from 1947-61. From 1961-76 he was Professor of Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he succeeded Austin Bradford Hill. He moved to Oxford as Professor of Biomathematics and became Professor of Applied Statistics and head of the new Department of Statistics, retiring in 1990. He was president of the Royal Statistical Society in 1982-4. He was president of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics in 1990-1991. He is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics. He lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

Biography

Basic career information is in the entry in

• Who's Who 2005

There are recollections in

• Peter Armitage "Purposes, methods, philosophies," Significance Volume 1 Issue 4 Page 170 - December 2004

External links

• A brief biography at wiley.co.uk (publisher of the Encyclopedia of Biostatics)

There is a photograph at

• Peter Armitage on the Portraits of Statisticians page.