Sir Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith, PRS (born 9 September 1946) is a British statistician who is chief executive of the

Alan Turing Institute The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computing ...

and president of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Early life and education

Smith was born on 9 September 1946 in Dawlish. He was educated at

Selwyn College, Cambridge Selwyn College, Cambridge (formally Selwyn College in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1882 by the Selwyn Memorial Committee in memory of George Augustus Selwyn (18 ...

, and

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, where his PhD supervisor was

Dennis Lindley Dennis Victor Lindley (25 July 1923 – 14 December 2013) was an English statistician, decision theorist and leading advocate of Bayesian statistics. Biography Lindley grew up in the south-west London suburb of Surbiton. He was an only child an ...

Career

From 1977 until 1990, he was professor of statistics and head of department of mathematics at the

University of Nottingham , mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom , established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status , type = Public , chancellor ...

. He was subsequently at Imperial College, London, where he was head of the mathematics department. Smith is a former deputy vice-chancellor of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

and became vice-chancellor of the university on 1 September 2012. He stood down from the role in August 2018 to become the director of the

. Smith is a member of the governing body of the

London Business School London Business School (LBS) is a business school and a constituent college of the federal University of London. LBS was founded in 1964 and awards post-graduate degrees (Master's degrees in management and finance, MBA and PhD). Its motto is " ...

. He served on the Advisory Council for the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; cy, Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible for t ...

from 1996 to 1998, was statistical advisor to the Nuclear Waste Inspectorate from 1991 to 1998 and was advisor on

Operational Analysis Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

to the Ministry of Defence from 1982 to 1987. He is a former president of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the

in 2001. His FRS citation included "his diverse contributions to

Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...

. His monographs are the most comprehensive available and his work has had a major impact on the development of monitoring tools for clinicians." In

statistical theory The theory of statistics provides a basis for the whole range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics. The theory covers approaches to statistical-decision problems and to statistica ...

, Smith is a proponent of

and

evidence-based practice Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the idea that occupational practices ought to be based on scientific evidence. While seemingly obviously desirable, the proposal has been controversial, with some arguing that results may not specialize to indiv ...

—a general extension of evidence-based medicine into all areas of public policy. With Antonio Machi, he translated

Bruno de Finetti Bruno de Finetti (13 June 1906 – 20 July 1985) was an Italian probabilist statistician and actuary, noted for the "operational subjective" conception of probability. The classic exposition of his distinctive theory is the 1937 "La prévision: ...

's Theory of Probability into English. He wrote an influential paper in 1990 along with Alan E. Gelfand, which drew attention to the significance of the

Gibbs sampler In statistics, Gibbs sampling or a Gibbs sampler is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for obtaining a sequence of observations which are approximated from a specified multivariate probability distribution, when direct sampling is diffic ...

technique for Bayesian

numerical integration In analysis, numerical integration comprises a broad family of algorithms for calculating the numerical value of a definite integral, and by extension, the term is also sometimes used to describe the numerical solution of differential equations ...

problems. He was also co-author of the seminal paper on the

particle filter Particle filters, or sequential Monte Carlo methods, are a set of Monte Carlo algorithms used to solve filtering problems arising in signal processing and Bayesian statistical inference. The filtering problem consists of estimating the i ...

(Gordon, Salmond and Smith, 1993). In mathematics and

statistics education Statistics education is the practice of teaching and learning of statistics, along with the associated scholarly research. Statistics is both a formal science and a practical theory of scientific inquiry, and both aspects are considered in sta ...

, Smith led the team which produced the

Smith Report The Smith Report was a report on corporate governance submitted to the UK government in 2003. It was concerned with the independence of auditors in the wake of the collapse of Arthur Andersen and the Enron scandal in the US in 2002. Its recommen ...

on secondary mathematics education in the United Kingdom. In April 2008, Smith was appointed as director general of science and research at the

Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) was a UK government department created on 28 June 2007 to take over some of the functions of the Department of Education and Skills and of the Department of Trade and Industry. Its h ...

(since merged with other departments to form the UK's BEIS). He took up his post in September 2008. His annual remuneration for this role is £160,000. Smith was knighted in the

2011 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2011 were announced on 31 December 2010 in the United Kingdom,United Kingdom: New Zealand,New Zealand"New Year Honours 2011"(14 January 2011) 2 ''New Zealand Gazette'' 55. The Cook IslandsThe Cook Islands: Grenada,Grenada: ...

Honorary doctorates

In 2011, Smith was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Plymouth University, in 2015, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

. and in 2020 an Honorary Doctorate Honoris Causa from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He also was awarded Honorary Doctorates from City University, University of Loughborough, Queen Mary and University of London.

Bibliography

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References

External links