Statistician and Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of Edinburgh. He was Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Statistics from 1954 to 1984 and a former President of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Biometric Society. He was a pioneer in the development of systematic monitoring of drugs for detection of adverse reactions.
He was educated at Lymm Grammar School and Manchester Grammar School, where he won a Cambridge scholarship. He read mathematics and statistics at Clare College, Cambridge from 1934 to 1938. He was awarded a postgraduate scholarship for statistical work in agriculture.