Abstract: William Farr(1807-1883), an English epidemiologist, was one of the founders of medical statistics, and was a prominent figure in Victorian public health activities.He created the world's best official vital statistics system in England, further improved life table method, and proposed many epidemiological concepts, such as the standardized mortality rate,prevalence, person year and dose-response relationship. This series of work not only made him a pioneer in the field of vital statistics, but also laid a solid theoretical foundation for the quantitative research of epidemiology.