10 Facts About Major Greenwood

Major Greenwood FRS was a British epidemiologist and statistician.

The Greenwood family is recorded back to the twelfth century in the person of Wyomarus Greenwode, of Greenwode Leghe, near Heptonstall, Yorkshire, caterer to the Empress Maude in 1154.

Major Greenwood was educated on the classical side at Merchant Taylors' School and went on to study medicine at University College London and the London Hospital.

Major Greenwood went to work as a demonstrator for the physiologist Leonard Hill at the London Hospital Medical College.

In 1919 Major Greenwood joined the newly created Ministry of Health with responsibility for medical statistics.

Major Greenwood co-authored a number of papers with Ethel Newbold during his tenure there.

Major Greenwood established a group of researchers, of whom the most important was Austin Bradford Hill.

Major Greenwood was elected President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1934 and awarded its Guy Medal in Gold in 1945.

The Major Greenwood statistic was used to discover that there is some kind of order in the placement of genes on the chromosomes of living things and this inspired a new look at epigenetics, which is considered to be as important as genetics in how living organisms develop and evolve.

Major Greenwood lived at Loughton, where among his neighbours were Sir Frank Baines, Millais Culpin, and Leonard Erskine Hill.