Wynn gained a
Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Oxford and a
PhD in Mathematical Statistics from
Imperial College, London. He was appointed a Lecturer and then Reader at Imperial College before moving to
City University London in 1985 as Professor of Mathematical Statistics (and Dean of Mathematics from 1987 to 1995). At City he co-founded the Engineering Design Centre. He moved again, in 1995, to the
University of Warwick as founding Director of the Risk Initiative and Statistical Consultancy Unit. He is currently, from 2003, Professor of Statistics at the Department of Statistics,
London School of Economics where he leads the Decision Support and Risk Group. Wynn was a founding president of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) and a Co-Investigator on the Research Councils UK funded project Managing Uncertainty in Complex Models (MUCM). He authored around 140 published papers and three books/monographs. He was awarded the
Guy Medal in Silver from the
Royal Statistical Society and the
George Box Medal from the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS), was an Honorary Fellow of the
Institute of Actuaries and a Fellow of the
Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Wynn was the elected
President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1977, the first president to be elected by a contested vote. From 1834 to 1978, RSS Presidents had always been nominated and returned unopposed. In 1978 however there had been a lot of opposition when Council arranged for Sir
Campbell Adamson to stand for Council, on the understanding that he would stand for and become president the following year. However, for the first time in living memory there was an election for Council, and Campbell Adamson came last out of a 25 candidates. (There were 25 candidates and 24 place on Council.) Despite this, Campbell Adamson was put up for president, and Wynn was nominated as an alternative candidate. Although Wynn was relatively unknown at the time, he won the election and completed his presidency. He undertook a wide range of research in theoretical and applied statistics, focusing principally on model building. Projects with a biological focus include work in dynamic modelling in biology (multi-strain models). Wynn died from cancer on 2 November 2024, at the age of 79. ==Publications==