The folklore of North America includes the legend of Johnny Appleseed, a man with a cheerful and generous nature who planted apple orchards from the east coast to the western frontier. He was a man who wanted to share what he had with others as he travelled about the country. This quality was recognised in Pierre Dagnelie by the International Biometric Society (IBS) when he was presented with their Honorary Life Member award in Cape Town, South Africa in 1998.

He began his studies in biological science. His choice was forestry at the State Agricultural Institute of Gembloux in Belgium, recognising the need for good statistical practice in his chosen field of study. One thing led to another and he took up the study of statistics and eventually joined the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of Gembloux, Belgium in 1957. Pierre completed his studies with a year of mathematics at the University Libre de Bruxelles.

Pierre was instrumental in the formation of the Department of Statistics and Computer Science at the institution in Gembloux and served at its helm from 1965 to 1993 when he retired. In the interim, he assumed the positions of Dean (1984–1987) and Vice-Rector (1988–1992) of the Faculty. After his retirement, he was Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences.

Pierre was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1985, for his contributions to the progress of applied statistics, particularly as applied within biology and agriculture. Pierre was one of the driving forces who helped to revive the Belgian Statistical Society, and served on its board for a long time. In recognition of his efforts, he became an Honorary Member of the Society, now named Royal Statistical Society of Belgium.

Pierre served the International Biometric Society and its Belgian region in many capacities, including service on many of their committees, their Councils, and as President of each of these Societies and Editor of Biométrie-Praximétrie. He served as IBS president in 1984–1985. The theme of his Presidency of IBS was internationalism, as he encouraged his colleagues to bring the Society into contact with biometricians throughout the world, no matter how isolated.

Above all, Pierre personally shared his work and knowledge of biometry with those at other institutions around the world including Africa, South America and his home continent. His nomination for Honorary Life Membership of the IBS credits him as an ‘ambassador of the IBS in Africa, in particular Morocco, where he contributed to create a group of members’, having ‘impact and legacy important with regard to the Society’s networks, and advancement of Biometry in Developing Countries’, and ‘As a statistical ambassador for Belgium, he even had a special passport for his many visits overseas’. Earlier in his career, he was a visiting professor in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, during which time he befriended David Finney; they remained in touch until David’s passing in 2018. Not surprisingly for somebody with such a strong interest in agronomy, working at Rothamsted Experimental Station was a highlight of his career. In his home institution, he founded the postgraduate programme in applied statistics, in 1967. Thanks to Pierre, generations of Belgian and foreign students have been introduced to statistical methodology and experimental design.

Pierre also shared his knowledge through his writings, most notably, his two-volume ‘Théorie et Méthodes Statistiques: Applications Agronomiques’, which appeared in 1969 and 1970 and are lauded as extremely eloquently written. The books are affectionately referred to as ‘the bible of Saint Pierre’. The book reviewer in Biometrics wrote ‘The present reviewer does not know of any other book at the introductory level in which the author manages to give as many mathematical derivations and yet remains within the reach of biologists and agronomists’. Among his other major contributions were a book on multivariate statistics, ‘Analyse Statistique à Plusieurs Variables’; a practical text on experimental design for agricultural researchers, ‘Principes D’Experimentation’ and more than 100 papers in journals and proceedings of scientific meetings.

His writings were motivated to a great extent by his desire to have treatises on the theory and application of statistics for those biometricians with French as their mother tongue or otherwise principal means of scientific communication. This was particularly important for those biometricians in Africa who had scant access to the statistics literature in their working language.

Pierre has contributed significantly to biometry and statistics in Gembloux, Belgium, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Pierre outlived his wife, with whom he had a son, Thierry. He was held in great esteem by the professional community in Belgium and abroad, and will be dearly missed.