Statistics as an independent science is a development of the twentieth century. The Χ² of Karl Pearson (1900) can be considered as the epifany of the discipline but the genius who established the solid foundations ,which gives the scientific status to statistics, is Sir Ronald A. Fisher. It is presented in this lecture an outline of the context where statistics emerge as well as its main points of reference. With Fisher as the center we sketch the history since K.Pearson and Student until today. We are interested mainly in the foundations where Fisher´s (1922) paper is the breaktrough which gives an object an a methodology of work to statistics, formally and logically speaking. This paper is the written text of the openig lecture to the national Statistics Symposium of Colombia.