Richard James Boys

Richard J. Boys (6 April 1960 – 5 March 2019) was a statistician best known for his contributions to the Bayesian inference, hidden Markov models and stochastic systems.

Early life and education Richard attended Newcastle University where he obtained a BSc in mathematics in 1981. He went on to do a Master's and a doctorate at the University of Sheffield, completing it in 1985.

Academic career In the same year, he started a lectureship at Newcastle University and would stay at Newcastle for his whole career. In 1996, he became a senior lecturer, and in 2005, he became a Professor of Applied Statistics.

Richard embarked on a long-standing collaboration with mathematicians and archaeologists and another statistician and colleague called Andrew Golightly. They researched inference for population dynamics during the Neolithic period, which led to archaeology, physics and statistics publications.

Late career He held a Deputy Head position from 2004 – 2009. He was also on the Newcastle University Senate for a term. By the time of his death, he was Head of Pure Mathematics and Statistics.