Adrian Smith (statistician)

Sir Adrian Smith PRS
63rdPresident of the Royal Society
Incumbent
Assumed office 30 November 2020
Preceded by	Venki Ramakrishnan
Personal details
Born	Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith (1946-09-09)9 September 1946 Dawlish,Devon, England
Residence	UK
Alma mater	University of Cambridge University College London
Awards	Guy Medal(Bronze, 1977) (Silver, 1993) (Gold, 2016)
Scientific career
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	Imperial College London Queen Mary, University of London
Thesis	Bayesian inference for the linear model(1972)
Doctoral advisor	Dennis Lindley
Doctoral students	David Spiegelhalter Chris Holmes

Sir Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith,PRS(born 9 September 1946) is a British statistician who is chief executive of theAlan Turing Instituteand president of theRoyal Society.

Early life and education

Smith was born on 9 September 1946 inDawlishin Devon. He was educated atSelwyn College, Cambridge,andUniversity College London,where his PhD supervisor wasDennis Lindley.

Career

From 1977 until 1990, he was professor of statistics and head of department of mathematics at theUniversity of Nottingham.He was subsequently atImperial College,London, where he was head of the mathematics department. Smith is a former deputy vice-chancellor of theUniversity of Londonand became vice-chancellor of the university on 1 September 2012.He stood down from the role in August 2018 to become the director of theAlan Turing Institute.

Smith is a member of the governing body of theLondon Business School.He served on the Advisory Council for theOffice for National Statisticsfrom 1996 to 1998, was statistical advisor to the Nuclear Waste Inspectorate from 1991 to 1998 and was advisor onOperational Analysisto the Ministry of Defence from 1982 to 1987.

He is a former president of theRoyal Statistical Society.He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Societyin 2001. His FRS citation included "his diverse contributions toBayesian statistics.His monographs are the most comprehensive available and his work has had a major impact on the development of monitoring tools for clinicians. "

Instatistical theory,Smith is a proponent ofBayesian statisticsandevidence-based practice—a general extension ofevidence-based medicineinto all areas of public policy. With Antonio Machi, he translatedBruno de Finetti's Theory of Probability into English. He wrote an influential paper in 1990 along withAlan E. Gelfand,which drew attention to the significance of theGibbs samplertechnique for Bayesiannumerical integrationproblems. He was also co-author of the seminal paper on theparticle filter(Gordon, Salmond and Smith, 1993).

Inmathematicsandstatistics education,Smith led the team which produced theSmith Reporton secondary mathematics education in the United Kingdom.

In April 2008, Smith was appointed as director general of science and research at theDepartment for Innovation, Universities and Skills(since merged with other departments to form the UK'sBEIS). He took up his post in September 2008. His annual remuneration for this role is £160,000.

Smith wasknightedin the2011 New Year Honours.In 2023 he was a guest onThe Life ScientificonBBC Radio 4.

Honorary doctorates

In 2011, Smith was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science fromPlymouth University,in 2015, an Honorary Doctorate of Science fromOhio State University.and in 2020 an Honorary Doctorate Honoris Causa fromFederal University of Rio de Janeiro.He also was awarded Honorary Doctorates from City University,University of Loughborough,Queen Mary andUniversity of London.

Bibliography

• Gelfand, A. E.; Smith, A. F. M. (1990). "Sampling-Based Approaches to Calculating Marginal Densities".Journal of the American Statistical Association.85(410): 398–409.doi:10.2307/2289776.JSTOR2289776.
• Gordon, N.J.; Salmond, D.J.; Smith, A.F.M. (1993). "Novel approach to nonlinear/non-Gaussian Bayesian state estimation".IEE Proceedings F - Radar and Signal Processing.140(2). Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET): 107.doi:10.1049/ip-f-2.1993.0015.ISSN0956-375X.
• Smith, Adrian(2004).Making Mathematics Count: The Report of Professor Adrian Smith's Inquiry into Post-14 Mathematics Education.London, England: The Stationery Office.

See also

• List of Vice-Chancellors of the University of London
• List of presidents of the Royal Society

External links

• Making Mathematics Count (Smith report)
• There is a photograph at "Adrian F M Smith"on thePortraits of Statisticianspage
• Dellaportas, Petros; Stephens, David A. (2020)."Interview with Professor Adrian FM Smith".International Statistical Review.88(2): 265–279.doi:10.1111/insr.12395.S2CID225600734.