William Gosset was educated at Winchester, then entering New College Oxford where he studied chemistry and mathematics. While there he studied under Airy. 

Gosset obtained a post as a chemist in the Guinness brewery in Dublin in 1899 and did important work on statistics. He invented the t-test to handle small samples for quality control in brewing. He wrote under the name "Student". 

Gosset discovered the form of the t distribution by a combination of mathematical and empirical work with random numbers, an early application of the Monte-Carlo method. 

Writing in [7], McMullen says:- 

To many in the statistical world "Student" was regarded as a statistical advisor to Guinness's brewery, to others he appeared to be a brewer devoting his spare time to statistics. ... though there is some truth in both these ideas they miss the central point, which was the intimate connection between his statistical research and the practical problems on which he was engaged. ... "Student" did a very large quantity of      ordinary routine as well as his statistical work in the brewery, and all tat in addition to consultative statistical work and to preparing his various published papers. 

From 1922 he got a statistical assistant at the brewery, and he slowly built up a small statistics department which he ran until 1934. 

Gosset certainly did not work in isolation. He corresponded with a large number of statisticians and he often visited his father in Watlington in England and on these occasions he would visit University College, London and the Rothamsted Agricultural Experiment Station. He would discuss statistical problems with Fisher, Neyman and Pearson. 

In 1934 Gosset had a motor accident, described in [7]:- 

...he ran into a lamp-post on a straight road, through looking down to adjust some stuff he was carrying...

In fact when confined to bed for three months after the accident he was able to concentrate on statistics. It was a year before he was recovered but he retained a limp for the remaining few years of his life. 

At the end of 1935 Gosset left Ireland to take charge of the new Guinness brewery in London. Despite the hard work involved in this venture he continued to publish statistics papers. 

McMullen, who was a personal friend, describes Gosset in [7] as follows:- 

... he was very kindly and tolerant and absolutely devoid of malice. He rarely spoke about personal matters but when he did his opinion was well worth listening to and not in the least superficial. 

Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990). 

Books:
E S Pearson, Student - A Statistical Biography of William Sealey Gosset (Oxford, 1990). 

Articles:
E S Pearson, Student as a Statistician, Biometrika 30 (1939), 210-250. 

E S Pearson, Some early correspondence between W S Gosset, R A Fisher and Karl Pearson, Biometrika 55 (1968), 445-457. 

E S Pearson, Some early correspondence between W S Gosset, R A Fisher and Karl Pearson, in E S Pearson and M G Kendall, Studies in the History of Statistics and Probability (London, 1970), 405-418. 

E S Pearson, Some reflections on continuity in the development of mathematical statistics 1890-94, Biometrika 54 (1967), 341-355.