Egon Pearson

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Egon Sharpe Pearson (Hampstead, 11 August 1895 – London, 12 June 1980) was the only son of Karl Pearson, and like his father, a leading British statistician. He went to Winchester School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded his father as professor of statistics at University College London and as editor of the journal Biometrika. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1955–56, and was awarded its Guy Medal in Gold in 1955. Pearson is best known for development of the Neyman-Pearson lemma of statistical hypothesis testing.

On 31 August 1934 Egon Pearson had married (Dorothy) Eileen (1901/2–1949), younger daughter of Russell Jolly, solicitor; they had two daughters. It was a great personal loss when his wife died from pneumonia in 1949, though he kept on their Hampstead house with the aid of a housekeeper, until 1967 when he moved to Cambridge after marrying (on 11 January) Margaret Theodosia (1896/7–1975), widow of Laurence Beddome Turner, reader emeritus in engineering, Cambridge, and second daughter of George Frederick Ebenezer Scott, architect, and Mrs Bernard Turner, of Godstowe School, High Wycombe.