Lancaster trained as a doctor, graduating in medicine from U Sydney in 1937. During the Second World War he served as a pathologist. He continued medical work whilst researching the application of the chi-squared distribution to discrete distributions (see discrete random variable), gaining his PhD in 1953. In 1947 he was a founder member of the organization that became the SSAI. In 1959 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematical Statistics at U Sydney. For twelve years he was Editor of the Society’s journal and served as its President in 1965. He was awarded the Society’s Pitman Medal (see Pitman) in 1980.
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/About/lancaster.htm Obituary and photograph.