In memoriam: Professor Peter Armitage CBE (15 June 1924 – 14 February 2024)

Professor Peter Armitage CBE (15 June 1924 – 14 February 2024)

MA Camb, MA Oxf, PhD Lond

The Master and Fellows of St Peter’s College are saddened to share news of the death of our Emeritus Fellow, Professor Peter Armitage CBE. Peter played a key role in founding the University of Oxford’s Department of Statistics in the 1980s and served as its first chair. He was appointed Professor of Biomathematics and the Head of Department for the Department of Biomathematics at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at St Peter’s College in 1976, retiring in 1990.

The Department of Statistics said:

‘His work in statistical methods for medical research was of the highest possible calibre and was recognised with a full set of Guy Medals in Bronze (1962), Silver (1978) and Gold (1990) from the Royal Statistical Society. He was appointed President of the International Biometric Society in 1972, President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1982 and President of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics in 1990.

There is a long history of statistics at the University of Oxford, extending back well before the creation of the Department of Statistics. In 1976, Professor Peter Armitage succeeded Professor Maurice Bartlett to become Professor of Biomathematics, a Professorial Fellow of St Peter’s College and Head of Department for the Department of Biomathematics. He had studied mathematics at Cambridge University and had been Professor of Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 1961 to 1976. Professor Armitage pushed for the formation of a Department of Statistics to “present a clearer picture of the outside world” of the work undertaken at Oxford. This new Department was created in 1988 and the Chair in Biomathematics became the Chair in Applied Statistics. Professor Armitage retired from the Department of Statistics in 1990.’

Image courtesy of the Department of Statistics.