The Mind of the Mathematician

Chapter 8. Fisher, Wiener, Dirac, and G

149 Chapter 8 } Fisher, Wiener, Dirac, and Gödel R. A. Fisher Ronald Aylmer Fisher was born in the Finchley district of north London on 17 February 1890. He and his twin brother, who died in infancy, were the youngest of eight children. His father was a member of a well-known London firm of auctioneers. Although most of the members of his father’s family were in business, one of his brothers placed high in the Cambridge mathematical Tripos and went into the clergy. Fisher’s paternal grandfather was said to have been inclined towards a scientific career. One maternal uncle became a successful London solicitor noted for his social qualities, while another gave up excellent prospects at home to collect specimens of wild animals in Africa. Fisher was a mathematical child prodigy. At school he had the disconcerting habit of producing the correct answer to a problem without showing how he arrived at it. In later years, others found his work di≈cult to follow and criticized him for inadequate proofs and the use of intuition. As with many mathematicians, Fisher’s special ability showed at an early age, and love of the subject dominated his professional career. At Harrow School he was fortunate to have good teachers. He was physically tough—he was keen on running. He su√ered from extreme myopia, common in people of genius, and was forbidden to work by artificial light. This led to an exceptional ability to solve mathematical problems in his head and also to a strong geometric sense. Fisher went up to Cambridge in 1909 as a scholar of Caius College. After three years he graduated with a first-class degree and stayed on for post- 150 Twenty Mathematical Personalities graduate work in physics. At the same time, he developed a strong interest in biology. During the First World War, Fisher worked as a schoolteacher, replacing men called up for military service, but he was a poor teacher and a poor disciplinarian, lacking the resonance with students that a teacher needs to get a sympathetic hearing, and he failed to arouse curiosity in his subject. So he battered his head against a brick wall of boyish mischief and passive incomprehension. It was not until after the war that he found his true vocation at Rothamsted, the agricultural research station outside London , where he built up an international reputation in genetics and in 1930 published his seminal work, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. In 1933 Fisher was appointed Galton Professor at University College, London , succeeding Carl Pearson, with whom he maintained a long feud. The GaltonLaboratoryo√eredfacilitiesfortheexperimentalbreedingofanimals that had not been available at Rothamsted. He developed a mouse colony and also bred snails, dogs, and even marsupials. He took over the editorship of the Annals of Genetics from Pearson; under his guidance it became a journal of importance in statistics. He also published his standard work, The Design of Experiments. In 1943 he returned to Cambridge as Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and built up a flourishing school of mathematical genetics. He was elected to a fellowship of Caius, his old college, where he became a legendary figure to generations of undergraduates. Fisher was awarded many high academic and scientific honors and was knighted in 1952. After retirement from his Cambridge chair in 1957, he led a nomadic existence until he settled in Adelaide, Australia, where he found that the climate and intellectual atmosphere suited him. In his later years, he often a√ected Indian dress. He enjoyed excellent health throughout his life, until he developed bowel cancer and died in 1962 following surgery. Most obituary notices tell us little about the personality of their subject. However, in some of the Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society of London , usually published several years after the death of the subject, there is an attempt to break with this convention. The memoir of Fisher by Yates and Mather (1963) contains the following. Fisher had a likeable but di≈cult character. He had many friends and was charming and stimulating to work with, and excellent company. He liked good food and wine, which he found gave an agreeable background to intellectual discussion. In conversation he brought not only a vast store of knowledge but Fisher, Wiener, Dirac, and Gödel 151 also an independent mind of great vigour and penetration to bear on almost any subject. He constantly...