CSIRO's First Statistician: Frances Elizabeth (Betty) Allan
 CSIRO's first statistician, Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Allan, was appointed seventy-five
years ago, on 29 September 1930. She worked in Canberra at Plant Industry, one of then six research divisions of CSIR,
as it was then known.
Over the next decade, Betty Allan championed and demonstrated the
usefulness of biometrics – the application of statistics to biology, often
now called biostatistics. The diverse
projects she worked on included:
- control of peach moths and blowflies
- the effects of various supplements on sheep
She retired soon after her marriage in 1940, as was required by law. At
around the same time CSIR formally established a Biometrics Section, forerunner to the present-day CSIRO Mathematical and
Information Sciences.
Read an article
about Betty Allan's career (pdf, 93KB).
Read some letters written to Betty Allan by prominent statistician RA
Fisher.
Helen Alma Newton Turner & Mildred Macfarlan Barnard
CSIRO's second and third statisticians were also women. Helen Alma Newton Turner was appointed in 1934 and Mildred Macfarlan
Barnard in 1936.
 Helen Alma Newton Turner had graduated from the University
of Sydney with a Bachelor of Architecture with honours in 1930. Due to the
lack of work available in her field, she found work as a typiste-secretary
at CSIR's Division of Animal Health in Sydney. After her interest in
statistics was spiked by a CSIR paper she was typing, Turner studied
mathematics and statistics at night at the University of Sydney. In 1934
her job at CSIR evolved into that of "Secretary and Statistician". In 1938
she took a year's study leave from CSIR and travelled to England to work
with Frank Yates at Rothamsted. Upon her return to Australia, Turner was
regarded as a secretary no more and achieved international renown through
her research into sheep breeding, remaining with CSIRO until 1973.
Melbourne-born Mildred Macfarlan Barnard had a PhD from
the University of London, having studied under both RA Fisher and F Yates.
She commenced work at CSIR in 1936, first spending a couple of months
working with Betty Allan in Canberra, and then working at CSIR's Division
of Forest Products in Melbourne. She remained at CSIR until the birth of
her first child in 1941, later holding the position of Lecturer in
Mathematical Statistics at the University of Queensland.
More Information
More information about the history of biometrics in CSIR
and the lives and careers of Allan, Turner and Barnard is available in:
Field, JBF, FE Speed, TP Speed & JM Williams. "Biometrics in the CSIR:
1930-1940." Austral J Statist 30(B), (1988): 54-76.
View this article as a pdf (3.6 MB)
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