Biography
Born in Brushford, near Dulverton, Somerset, Nelder was educated at Blundell's School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics.
Nelder's appointments included Head of the Statistics Section at the National Vegetable Research Station, Wellesbourne from 1951 to 1968 and Head of the Statistics Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1968 to 1984. During his time at Wellesbourne he spent a year (1965–1966) at the Waite Institute in Adelaide, South Australia, where he worked with Graham Wilkinson on Genstat. He held an appointment as Visiting Professor at Imperial College London from 1972 onwards.
Nelder was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976 and received the Royal Statistical Society's Guy Medal in Gold in 2005.
Nelder was responsible, with Max Nicholson and James Ferguson-Lees, for debunking the Hastings Rarities - a series of rare birds, preserved by a taxidermist and provided with bogus histories.
Nelder died on 7 August 2010 in Luton and Dunstable Hospital, where he was recovering from a fall.
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