Julian Besag
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Julian Ernst Besag FRS (26 March 1945 – 6 August 2010) was a British statistician known chiefly for his work in
spatial statistics Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques, many still in their early dev ...
(including its applications to
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 evide ...
, image analysis and agricultural science), and Bayesian inference (including
Markov chain Monte Carlo In statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods comprise a class of algorithms for sampling from a probability distribution. By constructing a Markov chain that has the desired distribution as its equilibrium distribution, one can obtain ...
algorithms).


Early life and education

Besag was born in
Loughborough Loughborough ( ) is a market town in the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England, the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and Loughborough University. At the 2011 census the town's built-up area had a population of 59,932 , the second large ...
and was educated at
Loughborough Grammar School , religion = Christian , head_label = Headmaster , head = Dr Daniel Koch , r_head_label = Chaplain , r_head = Revd E J York , chair_label = Chairman ...
. He began studying
engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
at the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
but moved to the
University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...
to study statistics, obtaining his
BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
in 1968.


Career

He then spent a year as a
research assistant A research assistant (RA) is a researcher employed, often on a temporary contract, by a university, a research institute or a privately held organization, for the purpose of assisting in academic or private research. Research assistants are not in ...
to Maurice Bartlett at the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
before obtaining a lectureship at the
University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...
. Inspired by John Tukey, he visited Princeton for a year. He moved to the
University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...
in 1975, where he became a professor in 1986. He was a visiting professor at the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
in Seattle during 1989–90 and, after a year at Newcastle University, returned to Seattle long-term. He officially retired in 2007 but remained an emeritus professor. At his death in 2010 he was also a
visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...
at the Universities of Bath and
Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
. Besag was an
ISI highly cited researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, ...
; his 1986 paper "On the Statistical Analysis of Dirty Pictures" was the most cited paper by a UK mathematical scientist in the 1980s. 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. ...
awarded him 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 Silver in 1983 for his contributions to spatial statistics, and he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...
in 2004.


Notable contributions


Spatial statistics

For a random variable Yij, stochastic dependence was known to be important. Julian initially researched a model to for the correlation between Yij pairs as a function of the distance between the corresponding lattice point pairs. However, this proved to be difficult due to ambiguous conditions for self-consistency. He therefore suggested using multivariate distributions for such a variable, taking inspiration from statistical physics and unpublished work by Peter Clifford and
John Hammersley John Michael Hammersley, (21 March 1920 – 2 May 2004) was a British mathematician best known for his foundational work in the theory of self-avoiding walks and percolation theory. Early life and education Hammersley was born in Helensburgh ...
: P Y_:(k,l)\neq(i,j)/math> He published his findings to the Royal Statistical Society in March 1974.


Death

Besag died in Bristol, 2010 following a surgery.


Notable publications

*Besag, J. (1974) "Spatial Interaction and the Statistical Analysis of Lattice Systems", ''
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B The ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of statistics. It comprises three series and is published by Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society. History The Statistical Society of London was found ...
'', 36 (2), 192–236. *Besag, J. (1975) "Statistical Analysis of Non-Lattice Data." ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D'', 24(3), 179–195. *Besag, J. (1977) "Comments on Ripley's paper." ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B'', 39(2), 193–195 *Besag, J.E. (1986) "On the Statistical Analysis of Dirty Pictures," ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B'', 48, 259–302. *


See also

* Ripley's K and Besag's L function * Spatial point process


References


Profile: Julian Besag, FRS
'' IMS Bulletin'' Sept/Oct 2004; Vol. 33 No. 5, p13.
Prof Julian Besag
at
Debrett's People of Today ''Debrett's People of Today'' was a reference work published by Debrett's containing biographical details of approximately 25,000 notable people from across the spectrum of British society, a rival to the longer-established ''Who's Who''. Those in ...

Julian Besag – Department of Statistics – University of Washington


Further reading

*


External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Besag, Julian Fellows of the Royal Society British statisticians 1945 births 2010 deaths People from Loughborough Alumni of the University of Birmingham Academics of Durham University University of Washington faculty People educated at Loughborough Grammar School