Major Greenwood FRS (9 August 1880 – 5 October 1949) was an English

epidemiologist Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and risk factor, determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decision ...

and

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

Biography

Major Greenwood junior was born in

Shoreditch Shoreditch is a district in the East End of London in England, and forms the southern part of the London Borough of Hackney. Neighbouring parts of Tower Hamlets are also perceived as part of the area. In the 16th century, Shoreditch was an impor ...

London's East End The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...

, the only child of Major Greenwood, a

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

in general practice there ("Major" was his forename, not a military rank.) and his wife Annie, daughter of Peter Lodwick Burchell, F.R.C.S., M.B., L.S.A.Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th ed., vol. I, 1965, pg 338-343, 'Greenwood formerly of Haddenham' pedigree The Greenwood family is recorded back to the twelfth century in the person of Wyomarus Greenwode, of Greenwode Leghe, near

Heptonstall Heptonstall is a small village and civil parish within the Calderdale borough of West Yorkshire, England, historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The population of Heptonstall, including the hamlets of Colden and Slack Top, is 1,448 ...

, Yorkshire, caterer to the Empress Maude in 1154. Greenwood was educated on the classical side at Merchant Taylors' School and went on to study medicine at

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

and the

London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and spe ...

. On qualifying in 1904 he worked for a time as assistant to his father but after a few months he gave up

clinical practice Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practice ...

for good. He went to work as a demonstrator for the physiologist Leonard Hill (father of the future statistician

Austin Bradford Hill Sir Austin Bradford Hill (8 July 1897 – 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist and statistician, pioneered the randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung c ...

) at the

London Hospital Medical College Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, commonly known as Barts or BL, is a medical school, medical and dental school in London, England. The school is part of Queen Mary University of London, a constituent college of the federal Un ...

. Leonard Hill recalled, "By recognising the ability of a student with nothing behind him to show his worth and by appointing him my assistant I may claim to have started Greenwood on his career." While Greenwood made a good start in physiological research he was already drawn to statistics; his first paper in

Biometrika ''Biometrika'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press for thBiometrika Trust The editor-in-chief is Paul Fearnhead (Lancaster University). The principal focus of this journal is theoretical statistics. It was es ...

appeared in 1904. After a period of study with

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 ...

he was appointed statistician to the

Lister Institute The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, us ...

in 1910. There he worked on a wide range of problems, including a study of the effectiveness of

inoculation Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or other microorganism. It may refer to methods of artificially inducing immunity against various infectious diseases, or it may be used to describe the spreading of disease, as in "self-inoculati ...

with the statistician

Udny Yule George Udny Yule FRS (18 February 1871 – 26 June 1951), usually known as Udny Yule, was a British statistician, particularly known for the Yule distribution. Personal life Yule was born at Beech Hill, a house in Morham near Haddington, ...

. In the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Greenwood first served in the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps a ...

but then was put in charge of a medical research unit at the

Ministry of Munitions The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis of ...

. There he investigated the health problems associated with

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...

work, one result of which was an influential study of accidents which he produced with Yule. In 1919 Greenwood joined the newly created Ministry of Health with responsibility for medical statistics. He co-authored a number of papers (see publications) with

Ethel Newbold Ethel May Newbold (28 August 1882 – 25 March 1933) was an English epidemiologist and statistician. She was the first woman awarded the Guy Medal in Silver in 1928. Early life Ethel May Newbold was born in Tunbridge Wells. One of eleven chil ...

during his tenure there (and wrote a touching obituary for her on her early death in 1933). In 1928 he became the first professor of

Epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ...

and Vital Statistics at the

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a member institution of the University of London that specialises in public health and tropical medicine. The inst ...

where he stayed until he retired in 1945. He established a group of researchers, of whom the most important was

. Greenwood played the same role in A. B. Hill’s career as Hill’s father had played in his. 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 ...

awarded the

Buchanan Medal The Buchanan Medal is awarded by the Royal Society "in recognition of distinguished contribution to the medical sciences generally". The award was created in 1897 from a fund to the memory of London physician Sir George Buchanan (1831–1895). It ...

to Greenwood in 1927, and elected him a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

in 1928. The election certificate stated

Engaged in medical research. Has applied the statistical method to the elucidation of many problems of physiology, pathology, hygiene and epidemiology. Is the author, or joint author, of more than sixty papers dealing with these applications, including important contributions to the experimental study of epidemiology (Journ Hyg, 24, 1925, Greenwood and Topley; ibid, 25, 1926, Greenwood, Newbold, Topley and Wilson). Has done much to encourage and develop the use of modern statistical methods by medical laboratory investigators, and, as Chairman of the Medical Research Council's Statistical Committee, to secure the adequate planning and execution of field investigations.

He was elected

President of the Royal Statistical Society The president of the Royal Statistical Society is the head of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), elected biennially by the Fellows of the Society. (The time-period between elections has varied in the past, and in fact elections only rarely occur ...

in 1934 and awarded its

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...

in Gold in 1945. Greenwood produced a large body of research, was the first holder of important positions in modern

medical statistics 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 U ...

and wrote extensively on the history of his subject, but as

wrote in his obituary, "in the future, it may well indeed seem that one of his greatest contributions, if not the greatest, lay merely in his outlook, in his statistical approach to medicine, then a new approach and one long regarded with suspicion. And he fought this fight continuously and honestly—for logic for accuracy, for ‘little sums.’" His name is attached to the Greenwood formula for the

variance In probability theory and statistics, variance is the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its population mean or sample mean. Variance is a measure of dispersion, meaning it is a measure of how far a set of numbers ...

standard error The standard error (SE) of a statistic (usually an estimate of a parameter) is the standard deviation of its sampling distribution or an estimate of that standard deviation. If the statistic is the sample mean, it is called the standard error ...

(SE) of the

Kaplan–Meier estimator The Kaplan–Meier estimator, also known as the product limit estimator, is a non-parametric statistic used to estimate the survival function from lifetime data. In medical research, it is often used to measure the fraction of patients living ...

of survival. A statistical method invented by Major Greenwood in a statistical study of infectious diseases is still used in present-day research. The Greenwood statistic was used to discover that there is some kind of order in the placement of genes on the chromosomes of living things and this inspired a new look at epigenetics, which is now considered to be as important as genetics in how living organisms develop and evolve. Greenwood lived at

Loughton Loughton () is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex. Part of the metropolitan and urban area of London, the town borders Chingford, Waltham Abbey, Theydon Bois, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill, and is northeast of Chari ...

, where among his neighbours were Sir Frank Baines,

Millais Culpin Millais Culpin FRCS (6 January 1874 in Ware, Hertfordshire – 14 September 1952 in St Albans, Hertfordshire) was an English physician and psychotherapist. He appears as a character in the ''Casualty 1907'' and ''Casualty 1909'' television serie ...

, and

Leonard Erskine Hill Sir Leonard Erskine Hill FRS (2 June 1866, in Bruce Castle, Tottenham – 30 March 1952, in Corton, Suffolk) was a British physiologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900 and was knighted in 1930. One of his sons was th ...

Publications

* * * * \ * Edgar L. Collis and Major Greenwood
''The health of the industrial worker''.
1921 *''Cripps, L, Greenwood, M. and Newbold, E (1923). "A Biometric Study of the Inter-relations of `Vital Capacity' stature, stem length and weight in a Sample of Healthy Male Adults". Biometrika. 14: 3–4. doi:10.2307/2331816.

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

2331816.'' *''Greenwood, M.; Newbold, E (1923). "On the Estimation of Metabolism from Determination of Carbon Dioxyde Production and on Estimation of External Work from Respiratory Metabolism". J. Hygiene. 21: 3–4. doi:10.1017/s0022172400031624. PMC 2167379 .'' *''Greenwood, M.; Newbold, E (1927). "Practical Applications of Statistics of Repeated Events, particularly to Industrial Accidents". J. Royal Stat. Society. 90: 487–547. doi:10.2307/2341203.

2341203.'' * Major Greenwood. ''The natural duration of cancer.'' London, England: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, Reports on Public Health and Medical Subjects, No. 33. 1926 * Major Greenwood. ''Epidemics and crowd-diseases: an introduction to the study of epidemiology''. 1935 * Major Greenwood. ''Medical statistics from Graunt to Farr: the Fitzpatrick lectures for the years 1941 and 1943''. 1948

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Greenwood, Major 1880 births 1949 deaths British epidemiologists English statisticians Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood Alumni of University College London Alumni of the London Hospital Medical College Academics of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine People from Shoreditch

Biography

Publications

References

Further reading

External links