John Brownlee (1868–1927) was a British physician and
medical statistician
Medical statistics deals with applications of statistics to medicine and the health sciences, including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine, and clinical research. Medical statistics has been a recognized branch of statistics in the Un ...
who became the first director of the Statistics Department of the
UK's Medical Research Committee.
Life
The son of a
Church of Scotland minister, he studied at the
University of Glasgow, obtaining degrees first in mathematics and
natural philosophy and then in medicine. He became in 1900 physician-superintendent to the City of Glasgow Fever Hospital.
[''BMJ Obituary'']
/ref> In 1914 he became the founding director of the statistics department of the UK Medical Research Committee and held the post until his sudden death from bronchopneumonia in 1927.
Works
Brownlee was influenced by Karl Pearson
Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university st ...
's mathematical approach to statistics, and applied the Pearson family of distributions to epidemics. In the view of fellow epidemiologist and statistician Major Greenwood, Brownlee took these techniques further than any of his contemporaries.p. 6 of PDF.
/ref> His studies included the epidemiology of phthisis
Phthisis may refer to:
Mythology
* Phthisis (mythology), Classical/Greco-Roman personification of rot, decay and putrefaction
Medical terms
* Phthisis bulbi, shrunken, nonfunctional eye
* Phthisis miliaris, miliary tuberculosis
* Phthisis pulmona ...
and measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
.[
]
References
External links
University of Glasgow collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brownlee, John
1868 births
1927 deaths
20th-century Scottish medical doctors
British statisticians