A Conversation with Maurice Bartlett

Abstract

Maurice Stevenson Bartlett was born on June 18, 1910 in London. He received his secondary education at Latymer Upper School and subsequently at Queen's College, Cambridge. His first position in 1933 was as Assistant lecturer in the Department of Statistics at University College London. In 1934 he joined the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Research Station of Jealott's Hill. Much of his early work was carried out during his stay at ICI, which he left in 1938 to become a lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge. During World War II he was involved in rocket research, and in 1947 became Chair of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Manchester. He returned to University College London as Professor of Statistics in 1960. From 1967 to 1975, when he retired, he was Professor of Biomathematics at Oxford. He was elected a Fellow at the Royal Society in 1961, was awarded the Guy Medal in Gold of the Royal Statistical Society in 1969, received the Weldon medal from the University of Oxford in 1971, an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Chicago in 1966 and from the University of Hull in 1986. He was President of the Manchester Statistical Society 1959-1960 and of the Royal Statistical Society 1966-1967. He became an honorary member of the International Statistical Institute in 1980. The following conversation took place in late February 1987 in Santa Barbara, California.