Biostatistics is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, especially in medicine, pharmacy, agriculture and fishery; the collection, summarization, and analysis of data from those experiments; and the interpretation of, and inference from, the results. A major branch is medical biostatistics, which is exclusively concerned with medicine and health.
Biostatistical modeling forms an important part of numerous modern biological theories. In the early 1900s, after the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's Mendelian inheritance work, the gaps in understanding between genetics and evolutionary Darwinism led to vigorous debate between biometricians, such as Walter Weldon and Karl Pearson, and Mendelians, such as Charles Davenport, William Bateson and Wilhelm Johannsen. By the 1930s, statisticians and models built on statistical reasoning had helped to resolve these differences and to produce the neo-Darwinian modern evolutionary synthesis.
The leading figures in the establishment of population genetics and this synthesis all relied on statistics and developed its use in biology.
These and other biostatisticians, mathematical biologists, and statistically inclined geneticists helped bring together evolutionary biology and genetics into a consistent, coherent whole that could begin to be quantitatively modeled.