Roy C. Geary

Dr. Robert (Roy) Charles Geary was an Irish statistician who lived from 1896 to 1983. He held degrees from University College Dublin and the Sorbonne. He lectured in mathematics at University College Southampton (1922-23) and in applied economics at Cambridge University (1946-47). He was a statistician in the Department of Industry and Commerce between 1923 and 1957. He was the founding director of the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) (in 1949). He was head of the National Accounts Branch of the United Nations in New York from 1957 to 1960. He was the founding director of the Economic and Social Research Institute (in 1960) where he stayed till his retirement in 1966. He was an honorary fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In 1981, he won the Boyle Medal. [ [http://www.rds.ie/home/index.aspx?id=1688 List of Boyle Medal Winners] ]

Roy Geary is known for Geary's C, the Geary-Khamis dollar, the Stone-Geary utility function, and Geary's Theorem [R.C. Geary (1936), 'The Distribution of the Student's Ratio for the Non-Normal Samples, Supplement to the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 3, 178-184.] , which has that if the sample mean is distributed independently of the sample variance, then the population is distributed normally. [R.G. Laha (1953), On an Extension of Geary's Theorem, Biometrika, 40 (1/2), 228-229.]

References

External sources

* [http://www.universityscience.ie/pages/scientists/sci_robert_geary.php Roy Geary at Irish Universities]
* [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2981948 Obituary, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 148 (2):162]
* [http://www.ucd.ie/economic/staff/pneary/pdf/geary97.pdf J.P. Neary (1997), R.C. Geary's Contributions to Economic Theory, in D. Conniffe (ed.), Roy Geary 1896-1983: Irish Statistician, White Oak Press, Dublin]