My friend Michael Healy, who has died aged 92, was one of the outstanding statisticians of his generation, renowned for his pioneering work in agriculture and in medical statistics.
Michael made important contributions to many areas of statistical methodology including experimental design, clinical trials and computational statistics. In the early part of his career he collaborated with Jim Tanner, one of the world’s leading experts on child growth, on a set of clinical standards for children’s growth, skeletal maturity and dental development that are still in use. One fascinating application was the work using athletes competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics to study body shape and its relationship with different sports.
He was born and brought up in Paignton, Devon, the son of George Healy, a GP, and his wife, Enid. Following his education at Bryanston school, Dorset, Michael read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he also demonstrated his musical talents and organising abilities by taking over the conducting of an amateur madrigal group. Later in life he was a member of the Bach Choir, the London Orpheus Choir, the London Symphony Chorus and the BBC Symphony Chorus.
He spent the last two years of the second world war, and a year following, at the Admiralty before moving to Rothamsted Experimental Station, the agricultural research centre in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, working as a statistician, from 1947 to 1965. From there he went to head the computing and statistics division at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Research Centre, Northwick Park, north-west London, until 1977, when he was appointed professor of medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene.
His address as chair of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) medical section in 1978, in which he discussed whether statistics was a science or a technology (the latter being his own view), was a key philosophical marker for the profession and is still widely quoted.
Following his retirement in 1989 he continued to be active as a visiting fellow at the University of London Institute of Education. He was awarded the RSS’s highest honour, its gold medal, in 1999.
In the early 2000s he withdrew from active statistical work, but his fluency in French provided a source of work in translating and editing, which he put to good use for Project Gutenberg, the free digital library.
Michael was one of the most influential, colourful and innovative statisticians of his generation. My own career owes much to his kindness, and this has been echoed by many others.
His wife, Jennifer, died in 1995. He is survived by his son, Columb, his daughter, Jan, his brother, Derek, and four grandchildren.
