David Cox (statistician)

Sir
David Cox
FRS FBA FRSE FRSC
Cox in 1980
Born(1924-07-15)15 July 1924
Birmingham, England
Died18 January 2022(2022-01-18) (aged 97)
Alma mater
  • St John's College, Cambridge (MA)
  • University of Leeds (PhD)
Known for
Spouse
Joyce Drummond
(m. 1947)
Children4
Awards
  • Knight Bachelor
  • Fellow of the Royal Society
  • Guy Medal (Silver, 1961) (Gold, 1973)
  • George Box Medal (2005)
  • Copley Medal (2010)
  • International Prize in Statistics (2016)
  • BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2016)
Scientific career
FieldsStatistics
Institutions
  • Royal Aircraft Establishment
  • Wool Industries Research Association
  • University of Cambridge
  • Birkbeck College, London
  • Imperial College London
  • Nuffield College, Oxford
Thesis Theory of Fibre Motion  (1949)
Doctoral advisor
  • Henry Daniels
  • Bernard Lewis Welch
Doctoral students
  • David Hinkley
  • Peter McCullagh
  • Basilio de Bragança Pereira
  • Walter L. Smith
  • Gauss Moutinho Cordeiro
  • Adelchi Azzalini
  • Valerie Isham
  • Henry Wynn
  • Claudio Di Veroli
  • Jane Hutton
Other notable students
Nancy Reid (postdoc)

Sir David Roxbee Cox FRS FBA FRSE FRSC (15 July 1924 – 18 January 2022) was a British statistician and educator. His wide-ranging contributions to the field of statistics included introducing logistic regression, the proportional hazards model and the Cox process, a point process named after him.

He was a professor of statistics at Birkbeck College, London, Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, and served as Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford. The first recipient of the International Prize in Statistics, he also received the Guy, George Box and Copley medals, as well as a knighthood.