Prominent British statistician Sir David Cox has been named the inaugural recipient of the International Prize in Statistics. Like the acclaimed Fields Medal, Abel Prize, Turing Award and Nobel Prize, the International Prize in Statistics is considered the highest honor in its field. It will be bestowed every other year to an individual or team for major achievements using statistics to advance science, technology and human welfare.

• Cox is a giant in the field of statistics, but the International Prize in Statistics Foundation is recognizing him specifically for his 1972 paper in which he developed the proportional hazards model that today bears his name.
• The Cox Model is widely used in the analysis of survival data and enables researchers to more easily identify the risks of specific factors for mortality or other survival outcomes among groups of patients with disparate characteristics.
• From disease risk assessment and treatment evaluation to product liability, school dropout, reincarceration and AIDS surveillance systems, the Cox Model has been applied essentially in all fields of science, as well as in engineering.

Successful application of the Cox Model has led to life-changing breakthroughs with far-reaching societal effects, some of which include the following:

• Demonstrating that a major reduction in smoking-related cardiac deaths could be seen within just one year of smoking cessation, not 10 or more years as previously thought
• Showing the mortality effects of particulate air pollution, a finding that has changed both industrial practices and air quality regulations worldwide
• Identifying risk factors of coronary artery disease and analyzing treatments for lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, obesity, sleep apnea and septic shock