‘Student’

Abstract ‘Student’ was the pseudonym which William Sealy Gosset used when pub lishing his scientific work. He was employed for the whole of his working life as a Brewer with Arthur Guinness, Son & Co. Ltd., as the firm was then called, but his publications over thirty years during the early part of the twentieth century, and his friendship with other statistical pioneers, have had a pro found effect on the practical use of statistics in industry and agriculture. The account of his work and correspondence which follows has been developed from the writings ofEgon Sharpe Pearson, who knew him well. After Gosset’s death in 19 37, Pearson published an essay on ‘Student’ as statistician, and towards the end of his own life in 1980 he commented in typescript on his correspondence with Gosset, as well as on the earlier correspondence between his father Karl Pearson and Gosset. We have attempted to collate and edit all this material with the objective of presenting a rounded biography of a distinguished statistician, whose attractive personality shone out in every thing that he did.