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Fisher, Ronald Aylmer

R.A. Fisher
R.A. Fisher

The Englishman Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890 - 1962), son to an auctioneer, was a mathematician, statistician, biologist, and geneticist.

He started working as a statistician, and teaching physics and mathematics. Later he became a researcher analyzing his results with statistical methods. He also worked on information theory.

He popularized the method of maximum likelihood and the chi-squared test, which had already been introduced by Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1823.

He lent his name to, among others, Fisher information and the Fisher z-distribution.

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Last modified:10 January 2026 1.15 p.m.