Ronald Fisher was born on February 17, 1890 in London, England. He received a BA degree in astronomy from Cambridge University in 1912. Among the subjects that Fisher studied at Cambridge was George Airy's theory of errors. This study was the beginning of Fisher's interest in statistics.
Fisher is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern statistics. Many of his most important contributions were developed while he was at the Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station, including work in the analysis of variance, hypothesis testing, maximum likelihood methods, and the design of experiments.
Fisher was elected to the Royal Society in 1929, and over the course of his career received the society's most prestigious awards: the Royal Medal (1938), the Darwin Medal (1948), and the Copley Medal (1955). In 1933 Fisher became the Francis Galton professor of Eugenics at University College in London.
Fisher died on July 29, 1962 in Adelaide, Australia.