Paul Meier (July 24, 1924 â August 7, 2011) was a statistician who promoted the use of randomized trials in medicine.
Meier is known for introducing, with Edward L. Kaplan, the KaplanâÂÂMeier estimator, a nonparametric estimator of survival functions that accounts for changes in sample size over time.
Meier's 1957 evaluation of polio vaccine practices published in Science has been described as influential, and the KaplanâÂÂMeier method is thought to have indirectly extended tens of thousands of lives.