Reg J Gilbert was an Australian statistician who spent much of his career working in developing countries and for international organizations.  His career began in the Australian Bureau of Statistics after which he worked in Papua New Guinea and later in Botswana. In PNG he was Director of Statistics and led the first national population census in 1980 following Independence in 1975. He died between 2001 and 2004 [See footnote 9, page iv, of Anon 2004].  Although we never met, I keep meeting people in the oddest places who knew him, so I feel like my life has shadowed his. Florence Skelly is another person I never met whose circle of influences I keep encountering.
Bibliography:
Reginald J Gilbert [1986]:  The first complete enumeration of Papua New Guinea – The 1980 Population Census. Journal of Official Statistics, 2(4): 501–514.
Reginald J Gilbert [2001]: Asking questions on economic characteristics in a population census.  STAT Working Paper 2001-1, ILO Geneva, Switzerland. 2001.
Anon [2004]:  Collection of Economic Characteristics in Population Censuses.  Technical Report, Statistics Division, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, United Nations Secretariat and Bureau of Statistics, International Labour Office. ST/ESA/STAT/119.  Footnote 9, page iv.