William Fleetwood Sheppard FRSE LLM (20 November 1863 – 12 October 1936) Australian-British civil servant, mathematician and statistician remembered for his work in finite differences, interpolation and statistical theory, known in particular for the eponymous Sheppard's corrections. Life William Fleetwood Sheppard was born near Sydney, Australia. He was the second child of Edmund Sheppard, an Englishman who had gone to Australia in 1859, and his wife Mary Grace Murray; the couple had married in 1860. Edmund Sheppard was a lawyer and became a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland. When he was about ten William was sent to Brisbane Grammar School. However he stayed for only one term for the headmaster believed that the school could not do justice to such a brilliant pupil and that he had better go to school in England. In England Sheppard went to Charterhouse School where he had a very successful academic career and was finally head of the school. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge as a Foundation Scholar. When he graduated in 1884 it was as the Senior Wrangler (the mathematics student with the highest mark). Shortly after the results came out, a letter found him, addressed only to "The Senior Wrangler, Cambridge." The third wrangler was William Bragg and the fourth was W. H. Young. All the top wranglers that year were coached by E. J. Routh. After some years preparing to become a barrister and doing legal work, Sheppard joined the Education Department as a Junior Examiner in 1896. By 1914 he had been made an Assistant Secretary at the Board of Education. Sheppard had an extraordinary capacity for work; he would get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and work until 10 or 11 in the evening. He retired in 1921 at the age of 58. To save money, the government had asked all civil servants who would be retiring in the next few years to retire immediately; this was part of the Geddes Axe. Sheppard could not afford to retire and so he took on work as an examiner for the Cambridge School Certificate and the University of London. This was a great burden because he was amazingly thorough, recording all the errors that were made and the marks given to ensure consistency of marking across thousands of scripts. Sheppard had a parallel and equally distinguished career as a mathematician, distinguished enough for him to