Egon Sharpe Pearson (
Hampstead,
11 August 1895 –
London,
12 June 1980) was the only son of
Karl Pearson, and like his father, a leading British
statistician. He went to
Winchester School and
Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded his father as professor of statistics at
University College London and as editor of the journal
Biometrika. He was President of the
Royal Statistical Society in 1955–56, and was awarded its
Guy Medal in Gold in 1955. Pearson is best known for development of the
Neyman-Pearson lemma of statistical hypothesis testing.
On 31 August 1934 Egon Pearson had married (Dorothy) Eileen (1901/2–1949), younger daughter of Russell Jolly, solicitor; they had two daughters. It was a great personal loss when his wife died from pneumonia in 1949, though he kept on their Hampstead house with the aid of a housekeeper, until 1967 when he moved to Cambridge after marrying (on 11 January) Margaret Theodosia (1896/7–1975), widow of Laurence Beddome Turner, reader emeritus in engineering, Cambridge, and second daughter of George Frederick Ebenezer Scott, architect, and Mrs Bernard Turner, of Godstowe School, High Wycombe.
r />
