With great sadness, we announce the passing of our colleague, Professor Henry Wynn, who passed away on Saturday, 2 November 2024.
Henry was a full-time member of the Department of Statistics at the LSE from 2003 to 2011 and remained a very active colleague ever since. He served as Head of Department between 2003 and 2006, and also led the Decision Support and Risk Group (DSRG). For many years, Henry was the co-chair of the Research Centre CATS (Centre for the Analysis of Time Series). From 2000 to 2005, he was also part-time Scientific Co-Director of EURANDOM, the international stochastics institute at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. During the last several years, Henry was the Principal Investigator in the EU-funded projects CELSIUS (Combined Efficient Large Scale Integrated Urban Systems) and ReUseHeat (Recovery of Urban Excess Heat) at the LSE.
Henry was elected President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1977. His academic career included roles as Lecturer and Reader at Imperial College and, in 1985, Professor of Mathematical Statistics at City University London, where he became Dean of Mathematics from 1987 to 1995. At City University, he co-founded the Engineering Design Centre and introduced new degrees, including the MSc in Quality Improvement and System Reliability and the MSc in Research Methods and Statistics. In 1995, he moved to the University of Warwick as Founding Director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit (RISCU), developing it into a leading centre supported by numerous research grants. He was the founding president of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS), which now boasts over a thousand members and a successful annual conference.
In 1982 Henry was awarded the Guy Medal in Silver from the Royal Statistical Society and in 2011 the Box Medal from ENBIS. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and held an Emeritus Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Additionally, he was awarded the Exzellenzstipendium des Landes Oberösterreich by the governor of Upper Austria.
Henry was a prolific researcher in statistics, having written over 300 peer-reviewed publications on numerous topics, including experimental design, system reliability, computer experiments, dynamical search, algebraic statistics, and risk. In 2021, he published a societal critique with the book Against Sacrifice: An essay on risk and ethics.
Henry leaves two sons Hamish and Robin by his first wife Sandra and was happily married for over thirty years to his second wife, the distinguished photographer Jan Baldwin.
The Department of Statistics will deeply miss his presence and contributions. Please feel free to write your condolences here.