John Aitchison

John Aitchison
Born	1926
Nationality	British
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	University of Hong Kong
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Notable awards	Guy Medal

John Aitchison (born 1926) is a Scottish statistician. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge. From 1966 to 1976 he was Titular Professor of Statistics, and Mitchell Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Glasgow. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1968. In 1976 he joined the University of Hong Kong as the founding Professor of Statistics.

In 1986 he published the book, The Statistical Analysis of Compositional Data, the key reference to date on the analysis of compositional data.

In 1988, he received the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society for the 'paper on "The Statistical Analysis of Compositional Data”, which he read to the Society on 13 January 1982 (JRSS B 44 139-177) and for influential contributions to distribution theory, practical Bayesian statistics, statistical diagnosis in medicine and many other areas of applied and theoretical statistics.'

On his retirement from the University of Hong Kong in 1989, John joined the University of Virginia as Professor and Chairman of Division of Statistics. In 1995 he received the William C. Krumbein Medal of the International Association for Mathematical Geology for a 'distinguished career as author and researcher in the field of mathematical geology.'

Other influential books he wrote include

• The Lognormal Distribution, Aitchison, J. and Brown, J.A.C. (1957)
• Statistical Prediction Analysis, Aitchison, J. and Dunsmore, I.R. (1975)

Both are published by Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Photograph of John Aitchison on the Portraits of Statisticians page.
• William Christian Krumbein Medal