Joseph Oscar Irwin

Joseph Oscar Irwin (17 December 1898 – 27 July 1982) British statistician who advanced the use of statistical methods in biological assay and other fields of laboratory medicine. Irwin’s grasp of modern mathematical statistics distinguished him not only from older medical statisticians like Major Greenwood but contemporaries like Austin Bradford Hill.

Oscar Irwin was born in London. He attended the City of London School where he specialized in classics and then at a late date in mathematics. In December 1917 he won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge to read mathematics. A serious illness disqualified him from war service but he spent a year computing anti-aircraft trajectories for Karl Pearson. When Irwin graduated from Cambridge in 1921 he joined Pearson’s department of applied statistics which had returned to its normal activities. Irwin published his first work there, including his 1927 paper on the distribution of means.

In 1928 Irwin moved to Rothamsted Experimental Station and he stayed there until 1931. His old boss Pearson and his new boss Ronald Fisher were bitter enemies but Irwin's conciliatory nature allowed him to remain on good terms with both men. At Rothamsted he continued to work on mathematical statistics and he became one of the first people to master Fisher's innovations. Fisher made few concessions to his readers: see George Alfred Barnard's well-known "you are a mathematician, work it out" story.

Irwin made an important contribution to the dissemination of Fisher's ideas by writing expository pieces. In his appreciation Greenberg recalls the mathematical statisticians R. C. Bose and S. N. Roy telling him how by reading Irwin they been able to understand Fisher. Another valuable educational project was the series of papers "Recent Advances in Mathematical Statistics" which Irwin inaugurated in 1931.

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