The Florence Nightingale Lectures aim to invite a distinguished speaker to lecture on a statistical topic of their choice, one which can inspire the current generation as Nightingale herself did.
The Florence Nightingale Lecture Series is generously sponsored by XTX Markets.
Past Lectures
2026
2025
Thursday 29th May 2025
Speaker: Professor Po-Ling Loh, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Cambridge
Title: Differentially private M-estimation via noisy optimization
2024
Friday 23rd February 2024
Speaker: Professor Barbara Engelhardt, Stanford University
Title: Statistics, nursing and social reform: Following in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale
2023
Friday 3rd February 2023
Speaker: Professor Marloes Maathuis
2022
Friday 4th March 2022
Speaker: Professor Sir Bernard Silverman, Professor of Modern Slavery Statistics, University of Nottingham
2020
Tuesday 1st December 2020
Speaker: Professor Deborah Ashby, President of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS)
Title: Florence Nightingale and the politicians’ pigeon holes: using data for the good of society
2019
Tuesday 30th April 2019
Speaker: Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter,
Title: What would Florence Nightingale make of the way data is being used today?
2017
Wednesday 8th November 2017
Speaker: Professor Sir Andrew Dilnot, Warden of Nuffield College, University of Oxford
Title: Numbers and Public policy: Why statistics really matter
2016
Thursday 21st April 2016
Speaker: Professor Dame Janet Thornton, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EDI)
Title: Bioinformatics at the heart of biology and genomic medicine
2015
Thursday 16th April 2015 (Part of It All Addus Up: Celebrative Women Across the Mathematical Sciences)
Speaker: Professor Christl Donnelly, School of Public Health, Imperial College London
Title: An epidemiologist's life on the edge (of the science-policy interface)
2008
Speaker: Professor David Clayton, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research
Title: Revisiting some old epidemiological debates and controversies after the "genetic revolution"
2007
Speaker: Professor Lewis Wolpert, University College London
Title: What determines our beliefs?
2004
Speaker: Professor Sir David Cox, Nuffield College, Oxford
Title: From public policy to particle physics: statistics in the 21st century
2002
Speaker: Mr Peter Clark, President of Actuaries
Title: Words and numbers - actuaries are ambidextrous
2000
Speaker: Professor Sir Robert May, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government
Title: Extinction: biodiversity challenged
1998
Speaker: Professor Barry Scheck, Professor of Law, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law
Title: Scientific evidence and criminal justice
1997
Speaker: Professor Sir Walter Bodmer, Principal, Hertford College
Title: The somatic evolution of cancer