Warren Fisher

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Sir (Norman Fenwick) Warren Fisher (1879–1948), was a British civil servant.

Fisher was born in Croydon, London on 22 September 1879. He was educated at the Dragon School (Oxford), Winchester College and Hertford College, Oxford University. He matriculated in 1898, graduating with a first class degree in Classical Moderations in 1900 and again with a first in Greats in 1902.

After failing to get into the Indian Civil Service and the medical examination for the Royal Navy, he came a lowly 15th in the Inland Revenue entrance exams in 1903. Sixteen years later he was Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and the first ever Head of the Civil Service.

Fisher gave the Civil Service a cohesion it previously lacked and did more to reform it than any man in the proceeding fifty years. He increased the importance of the Treasury. He advanced the interests of women in the civil service and at one point described himself as a feminist.