Major Greenwood

Major Greenwood
Major Greenwood
	File:Major Greenwood.jpg Major Greenwood
Born	9 August 1880; Shoreditch
Died	Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Nationality	British
Fields	Epidemiology

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Major Greenwood FRS^[1] (9 August 1880 – 5 October 1949) was an English epidemiologist and statistician.

Major Greenwood junior was born in Shoreditch in London's East End, the only child of a doctor in general practice there. ("Major" was his forename, not a military rank.) He was educated on the classical side at Merchant Taylors' School and went on to study medicine at University College London and the London Hospital. On qualifying in 1904 he worked for a time as assistant to his father but after a few months he gave up clinical practice for good.

He went to work as a demonstrator for the physiologist Leonard Hill (father of the future statistician Austin Bradford Hill) at the London Hospital Medical College. Leonard Hill recalled, "By recognising the ability of a student with nothing behind him to show his worth and by appointing him my assistant I may claim to have started Greenwood on his career." While Greenwood made a good start in physiological research he was already drawn to statistics; his first paper in Biometrika appeared in 1904. After a period of study with Karl Pearson he was appointed statistician to the Lister Institute in 1910. There he worked on a wide range of problems, including a study of the effectiveness of inoculation with the statistician Udny Yule. In the First World War Greenwood first served in the Royal Army Medical Corps but then was put in charge of a medical research unit at the Ministry of Munitions. There he investigated the health problems associated with factory work, one result of which was an influential study of accidents which he produced with Yule. In 1919 Greenwood joined the newly created Ministry of Health with responsibility for medical statistics. In 1928 he became the first professor of Epidemiology and Vital Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he stayed until he retired in 1945. He established a group of researchers, of whom the most important was Austin Bradford Hill. Greenwood played the same role in A. B. Hill’s career as Hill’s father had played in his.

The Royal Society awarded the Buchanan Medal to Greenwood in 1927,^[2] and elected him a Fellow in 1928.^[1] The election certificate stated

Engaged in medical research. Has applied the statistical method to the elucidation of many problems of physiology, pathology, hygiene and epidemiology. Is the author, or joint author, of more than sixty papers dealing with these applications, including important contributions to the experimental study of epidemiology (Journ Hyg, 24, 1925, Greenwood and Topley; ibid, 25, 1926, Greenwood, Newbold, Topley and Wilson). Has done much to encourage and develop the use of modern statistical methods by medical laboratory investigators, and, as Chairman of the Medical Research Council's Statistical Committee, to secure the adequate planning and execution of field investigations.

He was elected President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1934^[3] and awarded its Guy Medal in Gold in 1945.

Greenwood produced a large body of research, was the first holder of important positions in modern medical statistics and wrote extensively on the history of his subject, but as Austin Bradford Hill wrote in his obituary, "in the future, it may well indeed seem that one of his greatest contributions, if not the greatest, lay merely in his outlook, in his statistical approach to medicine, then a new approach and one long regarded with suspicion. And he fought this fight continuously and honestly—for logic for accuracy, for ‘little sums.’"

His name is attached to the Greenwood formula for the variance or standard error (SE) of the Kaplan–Meier estimator of survival.^[4]^[5]^[6]

A statistical method invented by Major Greenwood in a statistical study of infectious diseases^[7] is still used in present day research. The Greenwood statistic was used to discover that there is some kind of order in the placement of genes on the chromosomes of living things^[8] and this inspired a new look at epigenetics, which is now considered to be as important as genetics in how living organisms develop and evolve.

Greenwood lived at Loughton, where among his neighbours were Sir Frank Baines, Millais Culpin, and Leonard Erskine Hill.

Publications

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Edgar L. Collis and Major Greenwood The health of the industrial worker. 1921
Major Greenwood The natural duration of cancer. London, England: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, Reports on Public Health and Medical Subjects, No. 33. 1926
Major Greenwood Epidemics and crowd-diseases: an introduction to the study of epidemiology. 1935
Major Greenwood Medical statistics from Graunt to Farr: the Fitzpatrick lectures for the years 1941 and 1943. 1948

References

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↑ Kaplan, Edward L. in a retrospective on the seminal paper in "This week's citation classic". Current Contents 24, 14 (1983). Available from UPenn as PDF.
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v t e Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society
19th century	1834–1836 The Marquess of Lansdowne 1836–1838 Sir Charles Lemon, Bt 1838–1840 The Earl FitzWilliam 1840–1842 Viscount Sandon 1842–1843 The Marquess of Lansdowne 1843–1845 Lord Ashley 1845–1847 The Lord Monteagle of Brandon 1847–1849 The Earl FitzWilliam 1849–1851 The Earl of Harrowby 1851–1853 The Lord Overstone 1853–1855 The Earl FitzWilliam 1855–1857 The Earl of Harrowby 1857–1859 Lord Stanley 1859–1861 Lord John Russell 1861–1863 Sir John Pakington, Bt 1863–1865 William Henry Sykes 1865–1867 The Lord Houghton 1867–1869 William Ewart Gladstone 1869–1871 William Newmarch 1871–1873 William Farr 1873–1875 William Guy 1875–1877 James Heywood 1877–1879 George Shaw-Lefevre 1879–1880 Thomas Brassey 1880–1882 James Caird 1882–1884 Robert Giffen 1884–1886 Rawson W. Rawson 1886–1888 George Goschen 1888–1890 Thomas Graham Balfour 1890–1892 Frederic J. Mouat 1892–1894 Charles Booth 1894–1896 The Lord Farrer 1896–1897 John Biddulph Martin 1897 Alfred Edmund Bateman 1897–1899 Leonard Courtney 1899–1900 Henry Fowler 1900–1902 The Lord Avebury
20th century	1902–1904 Patrick George Craigie 1904–1905 Sir Francis Powell, Bt 1905–1906 The Earl of Onslow 1906–1907 Richard Martin 1907–1909 Sir Charles Dilke, Bt 1909–1910 Jervoise Athelstane Baines 1910–1912 Lord George Hamilton 1912–1914 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth 1914–1915 The Lord Welby 1915–1916 Lord George Hamilton 1916–1918 Bernard Mallet, Registrar General 1918–1920 Herbert Samuel 1920–1922 R. Henry Rew 1922–1924 The Lord Emmott 1924–1926 Udny Yule 1926–1928 The Viscount D'Abernon 1928–1930 A. William Flux 1930–1932 Sir Josiah Stamp 1932–1934 The Lord Meston 1934–1936 Major Greenwood 1936–1938 The Lord Kennet 1938–1940 Arthur Lyon Bowley 1940–1941 Henry William Macrosty 1941 Hector Leak 1941–1943 William Beveridge 1943–1945 Charles Ernest Snow 1945–1947 The Lord Woolton 1947–1949 David Heron 1949–1950 Sir Geoffrey Heyworth 1950–1952 Austin Bradford Hill 1952–1954 Ronald Fisher 1954–1955 The Lord Piercy 1955–1957 Egon Pearson 1957–1959 Harry Campion 1959–1960 Hugh Beaver 1960–1962 Maurice Kendall 1962–1964 Joseph Oscar Irwin 1964–1965 Sir Paul Chambers 1965–1966 L. H. C. Tippett 1966–1967 M. S. Bartlett 1967–1968 Frank Yates 1968–1969 Arthur Cockfield 1969–1970 R. G. D. Allen 1970–1971 Bernard Benjamin 1971–1972 George Alfred Barnard 1972–1973 Harold Wilson 1973–1974 D. J. Finney 1974–1975 Henry Daniels 1975–1977 Stella Cunliffe 1977–1978 Henry Wynn 1978–1980 Sir Claus Moser 1980–1982 David Cox 1982–1984 Peter Armitage 1984–1985 Walter Bodmer 1985–1986 John Nelder 1986–1987 James Durbin 1987–1989 John Kingman 1989–1991 Peter G. Moore 1991–1993 T. M. F. Smith 1993–1995 D. J. Bartholomew 1995–1997 Adrian Smith 1997–1999 R. N. Curnow 1999–2001 Denise Lievesley
21st century	2001–2003 Peter Green 2003–2005 Andy Grieve 2005–2007 Tim Holt 2008–2009 David Hand 2010–2010 Bernard Silverman (resigned Feb 2010; replaced pro tem by David Hand) 2011–2012 Valerie Isham 2013–2014 John Pullinger 2014–2016 Peter Diggle 2017–2018 David Spiegelhalter 2019– Deborah Ashby
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Major Greenwood
File:Major Greenwood.jpg Major Greenwood
Born	(1880-08-09)9 August 1880 Shoreditch
Died	Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Nationality	British
Fields	Epidemiology