A. W. F. Edwards

A. W. F. Edwards

Anthony William Fairbank Edwards (born 1935) is a British statistician, geneticist, and evolutionary biologist, sometimes called Fisher's Edwards in the context of 20th century genetics. He is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and retired Professor of Biometry at the University of Cambridge, and holds both the ScD and LittD degrees. A pupil of R.A. Fisher, he has written several books and numerous scientific papers. He is best known for his pioneering work, with L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, on quantitative methods of phylogenetic analysis, and for strongly advocating Fisher's concept of likelihood as the proper basis for statistical and scientific inference. He has also written extensively on the history of genetics and statistics, including an analysis of whether Mendel's results were "too good", and also on purely mathematical subjects, such as Venn diagrams. His elder brother John H. Edwards (1928–2007) was also a geneticist; their father, Harold C. Edwards, was a surgeon. He was awarded the Telesio-Galilei Academy Award in 2011 for Biology.

He is also known for his involvement in gliding, particularly within the Cambridge University Gliding Club and for his writing on the subject in Sailplane and Gliding magazine as "the armchair pilot".