Peter Diggle

Peter John Diggle (born 24 February 1950, in Lancashire, England) is a British statistician. He holds concurrent appointments with the Faculty of Health and Medicine at Lancaster University, and the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool. From 2004 to 2008 he was an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow. He is one of the founding co-editors of the journal Biostatistics.

Previously, he has held positions at Newcastle University, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia. He also holds honorary appointments with Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Yale.

Diggle originally attended Edinburgh University to study mathematics, but halfway through, he was transferred to the University of Liverpool, where he studied "Computational and Statistical Science" (B.Sc. 1972). Under the tutelage of Julian Besag, he began to gain an interest in statistics.

Academic career From 1974 to 1983, Peter held a lectureship at Newcastle University for statistics before becoming a reader for the duration of 1984. While at Newcastle, he went under Robin Plackett’s wing, whose obituary he wrote.

His works have been recognised by many statistical societies, but some of the most notable recognitions are:

Presidency of the Royal Statistical Society from 2014 – 2016, starting his term early on the resignation of John Pullinger who was appointed National Statistician. He also started a fundraising campaign to send RSS fellows to teach MSc courses in statistics for Tanzanian students at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in 2016. Being invited to give talks all around the world at the International Statistical Institute from 1983 – 2011.

COVID-19 In April 2020, the RSS formed a COVID-19 task force. The task force is using their statistical expertise to help with COVID data collection and analysis. Peter Diggle is part of this task force.

Seminal works

Professor Peter Diggle has authored a range of texts detailing methods in geostatistics. Below are titles of some of his most influential work:

Statistics and scientific method: an introduction for students and researchers. Diggle, P., Chetwynd, A. 2011 New York : Oxford University Press. 172 p. . Book Model-based Geostatistics. Diggle, P.J., Ribeiro, P.J. 03/2007 New York, USA : Springer. 228 p. 978–0387329079. Book Handbook of spatial statistics Gelfand, A., Diggle, P., Guttorp, P., Fuentes, M. 2010 CRC Press. 619 p. . Book Statistical analysis of spatial point patterns. Diggle, P.J. 2003 London : Edward Arnold. 159 p. . Book Time series: a biostatistical introduction Diggle, P. 1990 Oxford : Oxford University Press. 257 p. . Book Discrete mathematics. Chetwynd, A.G., Diggle, P.J. 1995 London : Arnold. 209 p. . Book