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George Udny Yule

George Udny Yule
George Udny Yule.jpg
George Udny Yule
Born 18 February 1871 (1871-02-18)
Morham, Scotland
Died 26 June 1951 (1951-06-27) (aged 80)
Cambridge, England
Residence England
Citizenship United Kingdom
Nationality British
Fields Statistics, Genetics
Institutions University College London, Cambridge University
Alma mater University College, London
Known for Yule distribution
Notable awards Guy Medal (Gold, 1911)

George Udny Yule FRS (18 February 1871 – 26 June 1951), usually known as Udny Yule, was a British statistician, born at Beech Hill, a house in Morham near Haddington, Scotland and died in Cambridge, England. He came from an established Scottish family composed of army officers, civil servants, scholars, and administrators. His father, Sir George Udny Yule (1813–1886) was a brother of the noted orientalist Sir Henry Yule (1820–1889).

In 1899, Yule married May Winifred. The marriage was annulled in 1912, they didn't have any children.

Udny Yule was educated at Winchester College and at the age of 16 at University College London where he read engineering. After a year in Bonn doing research in experimental physics under Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Yule returned to University College in 1893 to work as a demonstrator for Karl Pearson, one of his former teachers. Pearson was beginning to work in statistics and Yule followed him into this new field. Yule progressed to an assistant professorship but he left in 1899 to a better-paid position as secretary to an examination board. He continued to publish articles and also a very influential textbook, Introduction to the Theory of Statistics (1911); his book was based on the lectures he gave as the Newmarch lecturer at University College.

In 1912 Yule moved to Cambridge University to a newly created Lectureship in Statistics and he remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life. During the First World War Yule worked for the army and then for the Ministry of Food. A heart attack in 1931 left him semi-invalided and led to his early retirement. His flow of publications almost ceased but, in the 1940s he found new interests, one of which led to a book, The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary.


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