Norman Thomas John Bailey,1923-2007

摘要

Norman Bailey, who died in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 31st, 2007, was, during the latter half of the 20th century, one of the most influential proponents of stochastic models for biological and medical processes. He was born on May 27th, 1923, and educated at Christ's Hospital School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics. He was required to interrupt his studies after 2 years to engage in scientific work for the war effort, and, faced with a choice between statistics and electronics, had no hesitation in choosing the latter. He was given a post in the Admiralty signals department, where he found that statistical variation in direction finding bearings provided a stimulating problem in estimation and led to a renewed interest in statistical theory. In 1946 he returned to Cambridge, taking part Ⅲ of the tripos, and was enthused by lectures by M. S. Bartlett (initiating a lifelong interest in evolutionary processes) and by R. A. Fisher (on genetics). A year taking the Postgraduate Diploma in Mathematical Statistics was immediately followed, in 1948, by a post in the Cambridge Medical School.