Leonard Henry Caleb Tippett (8 May 1902 – 9 November 1985), known professionally as L. H. C. Tippett, was an English statistician.
Tippett was born in London but spent most of his early life in Cornwall and attended St Austell County Grammar School, where his contemporaries included the historian A. L. Rowse. Tippett graduated in physics in the early 1920s from Imperial College London. He studied for his Master of Science in statistics under Karl Pearson at the Galton Laboratory, University College London and R. A. Fisher at Rothamsted. He spent his entire career, 1925 to 1965, on the staff of the Shirley Institute, Manchester becoming in 1952 one of the first Assistant Directors. Along with R.A. Fisher and Emil Gumbel, he pioneered extreme value theory. The Fisher–Tippett distribution is named after him.
At the Shirley Institute he applied statistics to the problem of yarn breakage rates in weaving. In the late 1920s and 1930s, he became known for his 'snap-reading' method of observation which led to improved production efficiency and operative utilization. As a result of his work in the textile industry, he was awarded the Shewart Medal of the American Society for Quality Control.
Tippett published "Random Sampling Numbers" in 1927 and thus invented the random number table.
In 1965 he retired to St Austell, Cornwall and in this period became an UNIDO consultant, being active in India. He died in 1985 after being hit by a van whilst walking from his home to the St. Austell Choral Society to sing in the St. Matthew Passion.
Awards
Warner Medal of the Textile Institute
Fellow of the American Statistical Association, 1950
Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society, 1954
Honorary MSc UMIST
President of the Manchester Statistical Society
President of the Royal Statistical Society, 1965
Shewart Medal of the American Society for Quality Control
Books
Random Sampling Numbers, CUP, London, 1927
Statistics, The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, Oxford University Press, London, 1943 Methods of Statistics, Williams & Norgate Ltd., London, 1931, 1948, 1952 Statistical Methods for Textile Technologists, by T. Murphy, K. P. Norris, L. H. C. Tippett, Textile Institute, Manchester, 1960, 1963, 1973, 1979 A Portrait of the Lancashire Textile Industry, OUP, London 1969
References
H. E. Daniels (1982), A Tribute to L.H.C. Tippett, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 145, No. 2, pp. 261–262. J. E. Ford (1986), L.H.C. Tippett, 1902-1985, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 149, No. 1, p. 44. (obituary)