User:Scottkeir/Frances Wood (statistician)

Frances Wood OBE (25 December 1883 – 12 October 1919) was an English statistician, believed to be the first female member of Council of the Royal Statistical Society.

Early years
Born in London to Samuel Chick JP and Emma Chick. Schooled at Notting Hill High School, and then read Chemistry at University College London, arriving 1904, graduating in 1908. Following three years of chemical research at the Lister Institute, transferred to statistical department.

Married Mr Sydney Wood of the Board of Education, July 1911

Professional career
From 1908, she worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, initially in biochemistry, under Sir William Ramsay and then Professor Harde. Following a course of lectures on statistical methods, she moved to the statistical department, and from October 1912, was the Grocers' Research Scholar in the Statistical Laboratory of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

During her time at the Institute, Wood published papers with medical statistician Major Greenwood and collaborators on the topics of cancer, , diabetes , the generalisation of statistical correlations on death rates , and (posthumously), fertility.

Her sole-authorship paper on trends in wages in London 1900-1912 was read before a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 18 November 1913, which the then President of the RSS Professor F Y Edgeworth commented made "an important contribution to the art of measuring changes in the value of money". She published one further article in the RSS journals - on the changes in the price of food experienced by the working and upper classes, in 1915, with no author affiliation.

Her career at the Institute was interrupted by World War I in 1915. She moved to the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Munitions.