John Nelder

John Ashforth Nelder ( born October 8, 1924 in Brushford, Somerset; † August 7, 2010 in Luton, Bedfordshire ) was a British mathematician and statistician.

Life

Nelder studied at Cambridge University (Sidney Sussex College). 1951 to 1968 he was Head of Statistics in the National Vegetable Research Station, Wellesbourne and 1968 to 1984, the Rothamstead Experimental Station. From 1972 he was also a visiting professor at Imperial College London.

Nelder developed in 1972 with Robert Wedderburn Generalized Linear Models. He also developed statistical software packages to ( GLIM for Generalized Linear Interactive Working Program, which was announced in 1975, and GenStat ).

In 1965 he developed with Roger Mead, the downhill simplex method ( Nelder -Mead method ).

In 1976 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2005 he received the Guy Medal of the Royal Statistical Society.