He pioneered small sample experimental design and analysis with an economic approach to the logic of uncertainty.

[1] Born in Canterbury, England the eldest son of Agnes Sealy Vidal and Colonel Frederic Gosset, R.E.

In his job as Head Experimental Brewer at Guinness, Gosset developed new statistical methods – both in the brewery and on the farm – now central to the design of experiments, to proper use of significance testing on repeated trials, and to analysis of economic significance (an early instance of decision theory interpretation of statistics) and more, such as his small-sample, stratified, and repeated balanced experiments on barley for proving the best yielding varieties.

[3] Gosset acquired that knowledge by study, by trial and error, by cooperating with others, and by spending two terms in 1906–1907 in the Biometrics laboratory of Karl Pearson.

The papers addressed the brewer's concern with small samples; biometricians like Pearson, on the other hand, typically had hundreds of observations and saw no urgency in developing small-sample methods.

[2] Gosset published most of his 21 academic papers, including The probable error of a mean, in Pearson's journal Biometrika under the pseudonym Student.

Fisher wrote to Gosset in 1912 explaining that Student's z-distribution should be divided by degrees of freedom not total sample size.

[4] In 1935, at the age of 59, Gosset left Dublin to take up the position of Head Brewer at a new (and second) Guinness brewery at Park Royal in northwestern London.