This fund was established in honor of John G. Saw in 1996 to support the purchase of journals, books and bindery for the John G. Saw Statistics Library of the George A. Smathers Libraries.

John Grenville Saw was born on November 4, 1934, in Coventry, England. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Birmingham in 1955 and was awarded the Corbitt Prize in mathematics from Birmingham. In 1959, Saw went on to earn his doctorate from the University of London.

He moved to the U.S. in 1962 where he taught statistics in Virginia for three years before joining the University of Florida faculty in 1965. He is a former statistics professor at UF and is considered instrumental in the establishment and growth of its Department of Statistics. For many years he was the graduate coordinator for the Statistics Department and he willingly served on a variety of committees that helped shape the research and teaching within that department and around the University. His many years of dedication to the Department of Statistics and the University of Florida, Gainesville, were formally acknowledged on 1 September 1990, when the departmental library was designated the John G. Saw Library.

An expert in linear models and multivariate analysis, Saw published papers on these subjects in various related journals. Later in his career, he re-focused his research activities on zonal and ultraspherical polynomials.

Saw passed away on December 26, 1990, after a long period of illness.