Sixto Ríos

Sixto Ríos García (Pelahustán, Toledo, January 4, 1913 – Madrid, July 8, 2008), was a Spanish mathematician, known as the father of Spanish statistics.

Biography The son of José María Ríos Moreiro and Maria Cristina Garcia Martin, he was taught by his parents, who were teachers. When the family moved to Madrid, he attended St. Maurice School and the IES San Isidro, being always the valedictorian.

In 1932 he graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the Complutense University of Madrid, with the best marks and getting the award "Premio Extraodinario", later he obtained a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He was a student of Julio Rey Pastor and the Laboratory and Seminar of Mathematics (LSM). He recalled that Esteban Terradas influenced his entry to statistics.

He was a member of the editorial board of Statistical Abstracts and full member of the International Statistical Institute and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

He conducted research with or directed theses of 16 professors, and some directors in statistical bureaus of Latin America. He conducted applied research for the Spanish industry and formed the School of Operations Research. He lectured at universities around the world and presented papers at international conferences and published in international journals, and helped to set up and direct research centers such as the School of Statistics at the University of Madrid, the Institute of Operations Research and Statistics at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and its journal Works on Operations Research and Statistics, the School of Statistics at the Central University of Venezuela and the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the Faculty of Sciences, with international courses sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS) and UNESCO.

Rios Garcia married Maria Jesus Insua Negrao and they had a son, Sixto Rios Ensua, who followed his father's profession.

Publications He is the author of over 200 research works, publications and monographs, on mathematical analysis, probability and statistics and operations research, among them: Statistical Methods, (Ediciones del Castillo, SA, 1967), Special Mathematics (Madrid: Paraninfo, 1972) Applied Mathematics (Madrid: Paraninfo, 1980) and Multi-criteria Decision Processes (Madrid: Eudema, 1990). 1943: "Sobre la reordinacion de series funcionales y sus aplicaciones", Abhandlungen aus dem Mathematischen Seminar der Universität Hamburg 15(1): 87–51 1952 : Introduccion a los Metodos de Estadistica, first part 1954 : Introduccion a los Metodos de Estadistica, second part 1958: "Sur les lignes de regression", Bulletin de l'Institut International de Statistique 36(3) :64–70 1981: Forward to Dictionary of Statistical, Scientific and Technical Terms (Spanish-English) by Hardeo Sahai and Jose Barrios, Wadsworth Publishing 1983: "Ramiro Melendreras Gimeno (1944—1983)", Trabajos de Estadisticas y de Investigacion Operativa 34(3): 3–5. 1994: "The probabilistic revolution" 1999: , from Centro de informacion y documentacion cientifica

Awards Sixto Rios received the Spanish National Award for Mathematical Research in 1979. He was Academic of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences from 1961 until his death, and Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Oviedo (2000) and the University of Seville (2001).

Because of his fundamental contributions to Spanish research, he is considered the father of statistics in Spain.