Frances Wood (statistician)
Frances Wood
Life
Wood grew up in a large family, the daughter of lace dealer Samuel Chick and the sister of nutritionist Harriette Chick. She studied at Notting Hill High School from 1897 to 1903; she then read chemistry at University College London from 1904 to 1908, earning second class honours there.[1][2]
From 1908 to 1912 she worked at the
She married Sydney Wood, an inspector of the Board of Education, in July 1911.
Contributions
Wood's early works in chemistry involved
Her work during the war remains unpublished, but two posthumous papers concern the effects of higher education on fertility,[BGW2] and the correlation between economic class and child mental development.[1]
Her sole-author paper on trends in wages in London 1900–1912 was read before a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 18 November 1913, which RSS president F. Y. Edgeworth commented made "an important contribution to the art of measuring changes in the value of money".[W1] 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.[W2]
Awards and honours
Wood became a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1913. She became a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1917, and an officer in the order in 1918. Shortly after her death, the society raised funds for a biennial essay contest in her memory. The first recipient of the Frances Wood Memorial Prize was Winifred Mackenzie for her article, "Changes in the Standard of Living in the United Kingdom, 1860-1914." In 2017, the society instituted their Wood medal "for excellent contributions to economic or social statistics".[1]
Selected publications
W1. | Wood, Frances (December 1913), "The Course of Real Wages in London, 1900–12", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 77 (1): 1–68,
JSTOR 2339758 |
BGW1. | Brown, J. W.;
JSTOR 2339727 |
GW1. | PMID 19978156 |
GW2. | PMID 20474569 |
W2. | Wood, Frances (July 1916), "The Increase in the Cost of Food for Different Classes of Society since the Outbreak of War", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 79 (4): 501–508,
JSTOR 2341003 |
BGW2. | Brown, J. W.;
PMID 21259713 |
References
- ^ a b c d e Cole, Tim (9 October 2017), "The remarkable life of Frances Wood", Significance, Royal Statistical Society
- ^ JSTOR 2340893