Dennis Victor Lindley (25 July 1923 – 14 December 2013) was an English statistician, decision theorist and leading advocate of Bayesian statistics.

During the war the degree course lasted only two years and, on finishing, Lindley had a choice between entering the armed forces and joining the Civil Service as a statistician.

He chose the latter and, after taking a short course given by Oscar Irwin which he "did not understand", he joined a section of the Ministry of Supply doing statistical work under George Barnard.

Lindley first encountered statistics as a set of techniques and in his early years at Cambridge, he worked to find a mathematical basis for the subject.

The atmosphere of the Bayesian revival is captured in a comment by Rivett on Lindley's move to University College London and the premier chair of statistics in Britain: "it was as though a Jehovah's Witness had been elected Pope".