Following his graduation in mathematics from Cambridge U, Venn was elected to a fellowship of Gonville and Caius College, where a stained glass window now stands in his memory. In 1859 he was ordained as a priest and spent a year as a curate at Mortlake in Surrey. In 1862 he returned to Cambridge U as a lecturer specializing in logic. Venn had a general interest in all branches of Statistics, and a letter that he wrote in 1887 to the Editor of Nature stimulated an explosion of interest in the mathematical theory of Statistics. His interests were not confined to mathematics. In 1909 he constructed a bowling machine that was used by the visiting Australian cricket team. In retirement he compiled the first three volumes of a history of Cambridge U. He was elected FRS in 1883.

http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/ewaters/301/12_behavior_of_correlation/venn_bio.pdf Fuller biography and portrait.