Thomas Bayes (1702–1761)
His posthumously published work, “An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” (1763), introduced Bayes' theorem and Bayesian probability.
Ronald A. Fisher (1890–1962)
His book, Statistical Methods for Research Workers
(1925) was one of the 20th century's most influential books on statistical methods, together with his second book The Design of Experiments
(1935) popularized statistical methods and motivated people to practically used statistics. Fisher is often called the father of modern statistics and experimental design
.
Karl Pearson (born Carl Pearson) (1857–1936)
Developed the Pearson correlation coefficient and contributed to the foundations of the field of biometrics.
William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937)
Known by the pseudonym Student
. He developed the Student’s t-test.
George Waddel Snedecor (1881–1974)
His book, Statistical Methods
(1937), expanded Fisher's methods to a wider audience, making them accessible to a range of disciplines from biological research to college students.
John Tukey (1915–2000)
In The Future of Data Analysis
(1962), Tukey argued for producing appropriate conclusions for all data problems, not just those with normally distributed data. He promoted the idea of statistics as an art rather than a fixed set of procedures.