Udny Yule - Education and Teaching

Education and Teaching

Udny Yule was educated at Winchester College and at the age of 16 at University College London where he read engineering. After a year in Bonn doing research in experimental physics under Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Yule returned to University College in 1893 to work as a demonstrator for Karl Pearson, one of his former teachers. Pearson was beginning to work in statistics and Yule followed him into this new field. Yule progressed to an assistant professorship but he left in 1899 to a better-paid position as secretary to an examination board. He continued to publish articles and also a very influential textbook, Introduction to the Theory of Statistics (1911); his book was based on the lectures he gave as the Newmarch lecturer at University College.

In 1912 Yule moved to Cambridge University to a newly created Lectureship in Statistics and he remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life. During the First World War Yule worked for the army and then for the Ministry of Food. A heart attack in 1931 left him semi-invalided and led to his early retirement. His flow of publications almost ceased but, in the 1940s he found new interests, one of which led to a book, The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary.

Read more about this topic:  Udny Yule

Famous quotes containing the words education and/or teaching:

    I am not describing a distant utopia, but the kind of education which must be the great urgent work of our time. By the end of this decade, unless the work is well along, our opportunity will have slipped by.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    What is this? A new teaching -with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.
    Bible: New Testament, Mark 1:27.

    Of Jesus after he had exorcized an unclean spirit.