Fellows will be sad to learn that former RSS President Henry Wynn passed away on 2 November 2024, at the age of 79.
Henry was born in Barnsley on 19 February 1945. He was educated at Westminster School, gained his BA in mathematics at Oxford and a PhD in mathematical statistics at Imperial College London.
He was involved in most of the major advances in experimental design including the algorithm for constructing D-optimum experimental designs, known today as the Wynn-Fedorov algorithm.
He was a lecturer and then reader at Imperial College before moving to City University London in 1985 as Professor of Mathematical Statistics (he was also Dean of Mathematics from 1987 to 1995). where he co-founded the Engineering Design Centre. In 1995, he moved to the University of Warwick as founding director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit. From 2003, he was Professor of Statistics at the London School of Economics, leading the Decision Support and Risk Group. Following his retirement, he remained Emeritus Professor at LSE and held a part time research post at the Alan Turing Institute.
Henry was RSS President from 1977–78, the first (and to date only) president to be elected by a contested vote. Previous RSS presidents had always been nominated and returned unopposed. However, with the requisite signatures for his nomination, Henry went on to win the election by a 3:2 majority.
He was awarded the RSS Guy Medal in Silver in 1982 and the George Box Medal of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) in 2011. He was also a founding president of ENBIS, an honorary fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He served on the RSS Research Section Committee several times from 1973 to 1998. He published over 140 papers and 3 books/monographs.
Henry was still an active member of the RSS until very recently, having joined our inaugural honours search committee in 2023 to award the latest Guy Medals.
On his recent interactions with the honours search committee, current RSS President Dr Andrew Garrett, said: ‘Henry made a tremendous impact on the search committee. He was enthusiastic and very willing – and it was fantastic to have his input.’
Our sincere condolences go out to Henry’s family and friends at this time. A full obituary will be published in a forthcoming edition of our Series A journal.