Ashes of Ronald Fisher, the 'greatest biologist since Charles Darwin', buried at St Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide
Ronald Fisher moved to Adelaide at 69 to resume working with E. A. Cornish, the foundation professor of mathematical statistics at Adelaide University.
Image courtesy University of Adelaide
The ashes of one of the 20th Century’s most significant scientists, Ronald Fisher, also a devout Anglican, are buried at St Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide. Geneticist and author Richard Dawkins described Fisher as the greatest biologist since Charles Darwin.
Fisher's strong interest in evolution and genetics led to him advocating for eugenics when it was still a respectable idea.
In 1957, at 69 and out of retirement, Fisher came to Adelaide for its sunny climate and worked as a senior research fellow at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and resumed collaborating with E. A. Cornish, the foundation professor of mathematical statistics at Adelaide University.
A brilliant student hampered by severe shortsightedness, Fisher he won a scholarship in 1909, at 19, to the University of Cambridge where he graduated with first class honours in mathematics. He went on to study postgraduate physics, including the theory of errors, heightened his interest in statistics.
Fisher became a supreme statistician. He also invented experimental design and was a principal founder of population genetics. He unified the disconnected concepts of natural selection and Mendel’s rules of inheritance.
He was particularly interested in and supported eugenics: the improvement of the human race by selective breeding. He was backed by Charles Darwin’s son Leonard in this argument.
In quantitative biology, the importance of his book Statistical Methods for Research Workers has been likened to that of Isaac Newton’s Principia in physics.
A devoted pipe smoker, Fisher was a paid tobacco industry consultant in the 1950s. He wrote against a convincing statistical link between smoking and cancer.
Fisher died in Adelaide in 1962 after an operation for colon cancer.
Fisher's collected papers were edited by J.H. Bennett, then professor of genetics at the University of Adelaide; a former student, research assistant, colleague and friend of Fisher at Cambridge and closely associated with him after Fisher came to Adelaide. These were published in five volumes by the university 1971-74.
The archives were deposited with the rare books and special collections of Adelaide University's Barr Smith Library in 1981 and attracted many research enquiries from within Australia and overseas. In 2000, the library digitised selections from Fisher’s published and unpublished work.
