Sixto Ríos

Sixto Ríos García (Pelahustán, Toledo, January 4, 1913 – Madrid, July 8, 2008), was a Spanish mathematician, known as the father of Spanish statistics.

The son of José María Ríos Moreiro and Maria Cristina Garcia Martin, he was taught by his parents, who were teachers. When the family moved to Madrid, he attended St. Maurice School and the San Isidro high school, being always valedictorian.

In 1932 he graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the Central University of Madrid, with the best marks and getting the award "Premio Extraodinario", later he obtained a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He was a student of Julio Rey Pastor and the Laboratory and Seminar of Mathematics (LSM). He recalled that Esteban Terradas influenced his entry to statistics.

He became professor of mathematical analysis at the University of Valencia, as well as in Valladolid and Madrid. He also became Doctor Engineer Geographer, and professor at the Technical School of Aeronautical Engineering and the Faculty of Economics.

He held the positions of Director of the School of Statistics at Complutense University of Madrid, Director of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Superior Council for Scientific Research), Director of the Department of Statistics at the Faculty of Mathematics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and president of the Spanish Society for Operations Research, Statistics and Informatics. He was a correspondent of the National Academy of Sciences of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Rios published a Spanish language description of the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem.

He was a member of the editorial board of Statistical Abstracts and full member of the International Statistical Institute and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

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