Ethel Newbold

Ethel May Newbold (28 August 1882 – 25 March 1933) was an English epidemiologist and statistician.

Ethel May Newbold was educated at Tunbridge Wells High School, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She first taught at Godolphin School, Salisbury. Her move to Statistics was induced by her work during the First World War in the Ministry of Munitions. She studied for a M.Sc. in the University of London, which she received in 1926, and was awarded a Doctorate in 1929. She became a member of the Medical Research Council in 1921, working on medical and industrial studies.

Ethel Newbold published 17 papers within the eight years she conducted research at the Medical Research Council. In his obituary, Major Greenwood describes her as "the best mathematical statistician and I think quite the best logician" of the group at the National Institute of Medical Research.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1921 and was the first woman awarded the Guy Medal in Silver in 1928, for the paper "practical Applications of Statistics of Repeated Events, particularly to Industrial Accidents" and for her other contributions to the then novel experimental study of epidemiology. She served on the Council of the Royal Statistical Society between 1928 and 1933.

The Ethel Newbold Prize

In 2014, the Bernoulli Society has established the Ethel Newbold Prize for excellence in statistics, to be first awarded in 2015. This prize is intended to support the important role of women in statistics but the nominee can be of any gender. The only constraint is that the set of nominations covers candidates from both genders.

"The Ethel Newbold Prize is to be awarded to an outstanding statistical scientist for a body of work that represents excellence in research in mathematical statistics, and/or excellence in research that links developments in a substantive field to new advances in statistics."