Many fellows will be very sad to learn that former RSS president, Professor Tim Holt died suddenly on 15 November 2022.
Tim was educated at Coopers’ school in East London and completed a BSc in Mathematics and a PhD at the University of Exeter.
Tim was President of the Society from 2005 to 2007, and the theme of his presidential address was public confidence in the official statistics system and its relationship to evidence-based public policy. Tim became an RSS fellow in 1977, was a member of Council from 1987-1991 and 2000-09 and joint editor of JRSSA from 1991-93.
Tim had a long and distinguished career in official statistics, beginning in 1970 at Statistics Canada. He returned to the UK in 1973 to take up a lectureship at the University of Southampton. He was later appointed Leverhulme Professor of Social Statistics, a post he held from 1980-1995, and was Deputy Vice Chancellor from 1990-1995. Tim was an important academic social statistician whose research and teaching influenced many people across the world.
In 1995 Tim led the merger of the Central Statistical Office and Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, to form the Office for National Statistics (ONS), providing a more integrated and comprehensive service to Government and the wider community.
He was therefore in the unique position of being the last director of the CSO and the first director of the ONS and ex officio Registrar General. On his retirement from the ONS in 2000 Tim was made Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). He then returned to a Chair in Social Statistics at the University of Southampton, later to become Emeritus Professor. After retiring from Southampton, he continued to be active within official statistics, through consultancy work and other activities such as chairing the UNSC Friends of Chair meetings on Statistical Indicators and the RSS National Statistics Working Party.
Former RSS President, Professor Denise Lievesley said “Tim had a solid core of integrity. He cared deeply about what was right. He was a really nice person, exceptionally kind, never pushy, always listening to what one had to say, and lovely company in an understated way”.
Our sincerest condolences go out to Tim’s family, friends and colleagues at this time.
A full obituary will be published in a forthcoming edition of our Series A journal.