Richard J. Boys (6 April 1960 – 5 March 2019) was a statistician best known for his contributions to the

Bayesian inference Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, a ...

hidden Markov model A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process — call it X — with unobservable ("''hidden''") states. As part of the definition, HMM requires that there be an ob ...

s and stochastic systems.

Early life and education

Richard attended Newcastle University where he obtained a BSc in mathematics in 1981. He went on to do a Master's and a doctorate at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

, completing it in 1985.

Early career

In 1986, Boys published his first paper “Screening in a Normal model” which was co-written with Ian Dunsmore in Series B of the

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’s journal. He was known for collaborating in his papers.

Academic career

In the same year, he started a

lectureship Lecturer is an academic rank Academic rank (also scientific rank) is the rank of a scientist or teacher in a college, high school, university or research establishment. The academic ranks indicate relative importance and power of individuals ...

at Newcastle University and would stay at Newcastle for his whole career. In 1996, he became a senior lecturer and in 2005, he became a Professor of Applied Statistics.

Bioinformatics

Around the end of the 1990s, Richard started to steer towards statistics in biology, and was particularly interested in Markov models in segmenting DNA sequences. This led to him researching biological and computational stochastic systems. This widened out to stochastic systems in general, where most of his contributions lied.

Bayesian inference

His most cited paper “Bayesian inference for a stochastic kinetic model” was featured in a scientific journal ''Statistics in Computing'' in 2008. In the paper, it outlined how exact Bayesian inference may be possible for the parameters of a general range of biochemical networks models, which helped create a new field of research in

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

. Richard embarked on a long-standing collaboration with mathematicians and archaeologists and another statistician and colleague called Andrew Golightly. They researched inference for population dynamics during the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

period, which led to

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, physics and statistics publications.

Australia

Richard had a liking to visiting

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. He first visited the country in 2003 to attend a bioinformatics conference in Brisbane. He was also an Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontier.

Late career

He held a Deputy Head position from 2004 – 2009. He was also on the Newcastle University Senate for a term. By the time of his death, he was Head of Pure Mathematics and Statistics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boys, Richard James 1960 births 2019 deaths British statisticians Alumni of Newcastle University Alumni of the University of Sheffield Academics of Newcastle University People from Leeds