Famous Living Statisticians from Around the World in 2021

All about the well-known statisticians of the world

Statisticians apply statistical methods and models to real-world problems. They gather, analyze, and interpret data to aid in many business – decision-making processes. Statisticians are valuable employees in a range of industries, and often seek roles in areas such as business, health and medicine, government, physical sciences, and environmental sciences. Here are some of the most famous living statisticians from around the world.

Sir David Cox

Sir David Cox is a British statistician who is known for his proportional hazards model. In the Cox proportional hazards model, which was introduced in 1972, Cox proposed a hazard function that was separated into time-dependent and time-independent parts. The analysis of medical data was greatly eased by the separation of inputs that depend on time from those that do not, and the Cox model is used extensively in medical research. In 1990 Cox was awarded the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation's Kettering Prize, an honor for outstanding contributions to the treatment of cancer. Cox was knighted in 1985. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1973 and received its Copley Medal in 2010. He wrote books on many aspects of statistics including The Theory of Stochastic Processes (with H.D. Miller, 1965), Theoretical Statistics (with D.V. Hinkley, 1974), Analysis of Survival Data (with David Oakes, 1984), and Principles of Statistical Inference (2006).

C R Rao

C R Rao is the most famous Indian statistician till today. Among his best-known discoveries are the Cramér–Rao bound and the Rao–Blackwell theorem both related to the quality of estimators. Other areas he worked in include multivariate analysis, estimation theory, and differential geometry. His other contributions include the Fisher–Rao Theorem, Rao distance, and orthogonal arrays. He is the author of 14 books and has published over 400 journal publications. Rao has received over 37 honorary doctoral degrees from universities in 19 countries around the world and numerous awards and medals for his contributions to statistics and science.

Andrew Gelman

Andrew Gelman (born February 11, 1965) is an American statistician, professor of statistics and political science, and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. He has received the Outstanding Statistical Application award from the American Statistical Association three times. He is also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Andrew has written several books on statistical methods, as well as "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State", a book about U.S. voting patterns. He is also well known for his blog, "Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science", which covers topics such as data analysis, statistical graphics, politics, social science, and academics in general.

Xiao-li Meng

Xiao-Li Meng is a Chinese American statistician and the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. He received the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2001. He has written numerous research papers about Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms and other statistical methodology. His interests range from the theoretical foundations of statistical inferences to statistical methods and computation.

Bradley Efron

Bradley Efron is a Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at Stanford University. He works on a combination of theoretical and applied topics, including empirical Bayes, survival analysis, exponential families, bootstrap and jackknife methods, and confidence intervals. Most of his applied work has originated in biomedical consulting projects at the Stanford Medical School, mixed in with a few papers concerning astronomy and physics. Even his theoretical papers usually begin with specific applied problems.