Karl Pearson

For the English cricketer, see Karl Pearson (cricketer).

Karl Pearson
FRS
Pearson in 1910
Born
Carl Pearson

(1857-03-27)27 March 1857
Islington, London, England
Died27 April 1936(1936-04-27) (aged 79)
Coldharbour, Surrey, England
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsLawyer, Germanist, eugenicist, mathematician and statistician (primarily the last)
Institutions
Academic advisorsFrancis Galton
Notable students
Ethel Elderton

Karl Pearson FRS FRSE[1] (/ˈpɪərsən/; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936[2]) was an English biostatistician and mathematician.[3][4] He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics.[5][6] He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology. Pearson was also a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics, and his thought is an example of what is today described as scientific racism. Pearson was a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton. He edited and completed both William Kingdon Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) and Isaac Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity, Vol. 1 (1886–1893) and Vol. 2 (1893), following their deaths.

  1. ^ Yule, G. U.; Filon, L. N. G. (1936). "Karl Pearson. 1857–1936". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 2 (5): 72–110. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1936.0007. JSTOR 769130.
  2. ^ "Library and Archive catalogue". Sackler Digital Archive. Royal Society. Archived from the original on 25 October 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
  3. ^ Joe.1 (2 January 2023). "Karl Pearson and the History of Eugenics at UCL". Professor Joe Cain. Retrieved 27 February 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ "Karl Pearson's The Problem of Practical Eugenics · Controlling Heredity · Special Collections and Archives". library.missouri.edu. Retrieved 27 February 2024.
  5. ^ "Karl Pearson sesquicentenary conference". Royal Statistical Society. 3 March 2007. Retrieved 25 July 2008.
  6. ^ "[...] the founder of modern statistics, Karl Pearson." – Bronowski, Jacob (1978). The Common Sense of Science, Harvard University Press, p. 128.