Florence Nightingale David
| Florence Nightingale David | |
|---|---|
| Born |
23 August 1909 Ivington, Herefordshire, England |
| Died | 23 July 1993 (aged 83) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics |
Florence Nightingale David, also known as F. N. David (23 August 1909 – 23 July 1993) was an English statistician, born in Ivington, Herefordshire, England. She was head of the Statistics Department at the University of California, Riverside in 1970.
David was named after Florence Nightingale, who was a friend of her parents.
David was tutored privately by a local parson, beginning at age five." By that age she already knew some arithmetic, so she began with algebra. Since David already knew English, the parson taught her Latin and Greek. At the age of ten, she entered to formal schooling. She studied mainly mathematics for three years, with the aim of becoming an actuary, but at that time the actuarial firms only accepted men. She earned a degree in Mathematics in 1931.
David received a scholarship and continued her studies with Karl Pearson at University College, London, as his research assistant. When Pearson retired, his son Egon, and R. A. Fisher, took over Karl's duties. After Karl Pearson died in 1934, David returned to the Biometrics laboratory to work with Jerzy Neyman, submitting her four most recently published papers as her PhD thesis, and earned a doctorate in 1938.
Working for Karl Pearson, F. N. David computed solutions to complicated multiple integrals, and the distribution of the correlation coefficients. As a result, her first book was released in 1938, called Tables of the Correlation Coefficient. All the calculations were done on a hand-cranked mechanical calculator known as a Brunsviga.
During World War II, David worked for the Ministry of Home Security. In late 1939 when war had started but England had not yet been attacked, she created statistical models to predict the possible consequences of bombs exploding in high density populations such as the big cities of England and especially London. From these models, she determined estimates of harm to humans and damage to non-humans This included the possible numbers living and dead, the reactions to fires and damaged buildings as well as damages to communications, utilities such as phones, water, gas, electricity and sewers. As a result, when the Germans bombed London in 1940 and 1941, vital services were kept going and her models were updated and modified with the evidence from the real harms and real damage.
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