Florence Nightingale David

F.N. David was named for Florence Nightingale, a personal friend of her parents. She shared with Nightingale an interest in mathematics and devoted her career to both statistics and to advancing the role of women in science and academia. Famous for her charm, her passion, her scholarship and her cigars, she was a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association. She founded the statistics department at the University of California in RIverside after a distinguished career at University College in London. She was well-known for her work with the younger Pearson, with Neyman and with Fisher.

While on the faculty at University College in London, she founded a scientific society that included both men and women; this was in response to the fact that the only such society at the University at the time was restricted to men. Throughout her career whenever she met adversity the found ways to overcome it.

She was the author of over 100 research articles and nine monographs. She is perhaps best remembered today for her books Games, Gods and Gambling, a history of probabilty, and, with David Barton, Combinatorial Chance. The American Statistical Association has a fine biography of her career, noting that she left behind " a legacy of academic achievement and an open door for women in statistics." The F.N. David Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies is named in her honor.

 

Born: 23 Aug 1909 in Ivington, near Leominster, England
Died: 23 July 1993 in Kensington, Contra Costa County, California, USA