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I'm looking for examples of people who made some important contributions to the field of statistics, yet their original training was not in statistics and they may have learned it 'on the job', while statistics was an established field (which means I'm interested in people from the 20th and 21st centuries). I'm interested in details on how they finally ended up studying statistics.

If it's necessary to give a strict definition of 'formal training', let's say I mean people who did not pursue a higher education degree in statistics, but my underlying motivation for the question is learning more about outsiders in the field, so I don't mind possible deviations from this definition.

I asked the same question on stats.stackexchange.com, and got interesting answers and comments, but unfortunately it has been closed as apparently they don't accept questions with several possible answers. I thought I could ask it here instead to get further answers, as there are questions here that are somehow similar (What are some famous mathematicians that disappeared?, Who were some mathematicians who have had a musical background?, etc.)

Thanks!

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    $\begingroup$ it has been closed as apparently they don't accept questions with several possible answers - this is not the case. I was one of the reviewers who vtc the question. A post that requires multiple answers is made community wiki but the problem with this question is it is merely a list based Quora type post with very broad conditions (and hence not focused). The comments there already mentioned that and thus I am not repeating here. I am not aware how this community would handle this question, though. So best of luck. $\endgroup$
    – User1865345
    Commented Jun 29 at 6:46
  • $\begingroup$ @User1865345 Obviously I did not understand that it was the reason for closing. I read the help pages relative to "not enough focus", and I made an apparently erroneous conclusion relative to the real reason for closing. I guess there are very few statisticians who meet the criteria I describe in my question, so I disagree with the idea that it would elicit an endless/useless list of famous people, if it's what you mean (if not, sorry for misinterpreting things again, but then I fail to see what is the problem exactly). $\endgroup$
    – Coris
    Commented Jun 29 at 10:04
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    $\begingroup$ The answer, which several people pointed out after your original post, is that in the early days no statistician had a degree in statistics as they hardly existed. Basically you could name anybody from the early part of the 20th century. $\endgroup$
    – mdewey
    Commented Jun 30 at 16:20

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