This page offers information about awards received by BSU staff members and alumni, as well as successes and impact of BSU research work

John BROWNLEE

Infectious disease physician
Appointed August 1914
Died suddenly from bronchopneumonia in 1927
Honours – Please see Nature Obituary, Nature 119, 573-573 (16 April 1927), doi:10.1038/119573b0

Major GREENWOOD

Physician (Epidemiologist and Medical Statistician)
Appointed 1927
Resigned in 1945, died in 1949
Honours – 1927: RSM Buchanan Medal; 1928: Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); 1934: RSS President; 1945: RSS Guy Medal in Gold

Austin Bradford HILL

Economist (“father of Medical Statistics”)
Appointed 1945
Resigned in 1962, died in 1991
Honours – 1950-52: RSS President; 1953: RSS Guy Medal in Gold; 1954: Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); 1961: Knighted

Richard DOLL

Physician Epidemiologist
Appointed 1962
Resigned in 1969, died in 2005
Honours – 1956: OBE; 1962: UN award for cancer research; 1966: Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS); 1971: Knighted; 1983: British Medical Association’s Gold Medal; 1986: Royal Society’s Royal Medal; 1996: Companion of Honour for services of national importance

Ian SUTHERLAND

Statistician
Appointed 1969
Retired in 1986, died in 2006
Honours – Joint Committee on Immunisation (member); Committee on Safety of Medicines (member); WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Tuberculosis (member); 1984: Weber-Parkers Prize of the Royal College of Physicians for Work on Tuberculosis

Nicholas E DAY

Statistician
Appointed 1986
Director until 1989; thereafter Honorary Director 1989-1999, resigned in September 1999
Honours – 1998: FMedSci; 2000: CBE (For services to Statistics and Epidemiology underpinning Cancer Biology) 2004: Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS);

Anthony L Johnson

Statistician
Appointed October 1999 as Acting Director
In post until December 1999
Honours – 1982: Founding co-Editor Statistics in Medicine; Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to Epidemiology of Epilepsy

Simon G THOMPSON

Statistician
Appointed 2000
Resigned in March 2011
Honours – 2011: FMedSci; 2011: Bradford Hill Lecturer at LSHTM

Vern T FAREWELL

Statistician
Appointed April 2011 as Acting Director
In post until March 2012
Honours – Editor-in-Chief Statistics in Medicine

Sylvia RICHARDSON

Statistician
Appointed April 2012
Current Honary Directory
Honours – 2009: RSS Guy Medal in Silver (only the second female to be so-honoured: the first was also a BSU-scientist, Ethel Newbold in 1928); 2015: Elected to Fellowship in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics; 2016: Elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences; 2017: Received Honorary Doctorate Degree from University of Oslo

 

Alumni or current members of MRC Biostatistics Unit who have received RSS or national honours include:

• Ethel Newbold: first female to be awarded RSS Guy medal in silver.
• Hilda Mary Woods: MBE.
• I. David Hill: RSS Chambers medal (gold).
• Peter Armitage: CBE; RSS President; RSS Guy medals in bronze, silver & gold.
• Richard Peto FRS: Knighted; RSS Guy medal in silver.
• Sheila Bird (nee Gore) FRSE: OBE; RSS Guy medal in bronze, RSS Bradford Hill medal (silver), RSS Chambers medal (gold); Bradford Hill Lecturer at LSHTM; RSS Howard Medal; FMedSci
• David Clayton: RSS Guy medal in silver; Bradford Hill Lecturer at LSHTM.
• Walter Gilks: RSS Guy medal in silver.
• David Spiegelhalter FRS: OBE; Knighthood; RSS Guy medals in bronze & silver; RSS President
• Nicola G. Best: RSS Guy medal in bronze.
• Sylvia Richardson: second female to be awarded RSS Guy medal in silver.

Presidents of Royal Statistical Society:

• Professor Major Greenwood (1934-6) English Death-Rates, Past, Present and Future: a valedictory address. JRSS 1936; 99: 674-707.
• Professor Austin Bradford Hill (1950-2) The doctor’s day and pay. JRSS 1951; 114: 1-36.
• Professor Joseph Oscar Irwin (1962-4) The place of mathematics in medical and biological statistics.  JRSSA 1963; 126: 1-44.
• Professor Peter Armitage (1982-84) Trials and Errors: the Emergence of Clinical Statistics. JRSSA 1983; 146: 321-334.

Fellows of the Royal Society or Royal Society of Edinburgh:

• Major Greenwood FRS (1928)
• Austin Bradford Hill FRS (1954)
• Richard Doll FRS (1966)
• Richard Peto FRS (1989)
• Nicholas Day FRS (2004)
• David Spiegelhalter FRS (2005)
• Sheila Bird FRSE (2012)