But now the college Fisher loved has turned its back on him. It has removed from the Hall a stained-glass window commemorating him, one of a set of six installed to celebrate him, Crick, Venn, Chadwick and two other distinguished college figures, Sir Charles Sherrington and George Green. It has done so because of accusations that Fisher was a proponent of eugenics.
The college council stated its intentions last June:
Sir Ronald Fisher was a student, Fellow and President of Caius. His contribution to science, through his work on statistics and genetics, was fundamental to fields as wide ranging as clinical trials in medicine through to increased production in agriculture. However, while Fisher was at Cambridge [as a student] he became the founding chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society and his interest in eugenics stimulated his interest in both statistics and genetics. He was a prominent proponent of eugenics, both in his scientific work and his public pronouncements throughout his career.
Fisher was the inspiration for the whole set of the six windows in Hall. His was the first to be suggested. The chosen design — the Latin Square from the dust-jacket of his book The Design of Experiments — set the tone for the rest. In particular, with this pattern in the lower window of an embrasure there was a need for something compatible in the upper window. The choice was not difficult: the three-circle logic diagram of John Venn, one of Fisher’s predecessors as President. These two windows were installed in time for the celebration of the centenary in 1990 of Fisher’s birth. They were much admired, and pressure for a further four soon mounted. The whole set was the work of Maria McClafferty, chosen on the strength of her rose window in Alexandra Palace, London.