Person
Ronald Fisher
Mathematician and statistician
Mathematician at the Rothamsted Experimental Station whose 1920s attempt to settle an argument about a cup of tea led him to invent the null hypothesis and the foundations of statistical significance testing (see Fisher Tea-Tasting Null Hypothesis Case). He published Statistical Methods for Research Workers in 1925, still the foundational statistics text taught in universities; Anders Hald called him a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundation for modern statistical science, and Richard Dawkins called him the greatest biologist since Darwin.
Episode 135 uses him as the counterexample to Elizabeth Holmes's inflexibility: none of the studies the show cites would exist without Fisher's work, and Fisher's world-changing idea wasn't a singular vision held from age 18 — it was something he stumbled into while brewing tea. Referenced, not interviewed.
Discussed in
- Episode 135 — 135-elizabeth-holmes-how-she-deceived-the-world-part-two