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Karl Pearson

3.8/5 ( ratings)
Born
March 26 1857
Died
2626 04 19361936
Website
Go to Website
Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics.

In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. He was a proponent of eugenics, and a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton.

A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.

When the 23 year-old Albert Einstein started a study group, the Olympia Academy, with his two younger friends, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, he suggested that the first book to be read was Pearson's The Grammar of Science. This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists. Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he claimed, is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who traveled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter, the fourth dimension, and wrinkles in time.

Pearson's relativity was based on idealism, in the sense of ideas or pictures in a mind. He stated, "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind..." "In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." "Law in the scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man."

Pearson achieved widespread recognition across a range of disciplines and his membership of, and awards from, various professional bodies reflects this:

1896: elected FRS: Fellow of the Royal Society
1898: awarded the Darwin Medal
1911: awarded the honorary degree of LLD from the University of St Andrews
1911: awarded a DSc from University of London
1920: offered the OBE
1932: awarded the Rudolf Virchow medal by the Berliner Anthropologische Gesellschaft
1935: offered a knighthood

He was also elected an Honorary Fellow of King's College Cambridge, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, University College London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Member of the Actuaries' Club.

Pearson's work was all-embracing in the wide application and development of mathematical statistics, and encompassed the fields of biology, epidemiology, anthropometry, medicine, psychology and social history. In 1901, with Walter Frank Raphael Weldon and Francis Galton, he founded the journal Biometrika whose object was the development of statistical theory. He edited this journal until his death. Among those who assisted Pearson in his research were a number of female mathematicians who included Beatrice Mabel Cave-Browne-Cave and Frances Cave-Browne-Cave. He also founded the journal Annals of Eugenics in 1925. He published the Drapers' Company Research Memoirs largely to provide a record of the output of the Department of Applied Statistics not published elsewhere.

Pearson's thinking underpins many of the 'classical' statistical methods which are in common use today.

Karl Pearson

3.8/5 ( ratings)
Born
March 26 1857
Died
2626 04 19361936
Website
Go to Website
Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics.

In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. He was a proponent of eugenics, and a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton.

A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.

When the 23 year-old Albert Einstein started a study group, the Olympia Academy, with his two younger friends, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, he suggested that the first book to be read was Pearson's The Grammar of Science. This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists. Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he claimed, is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who traveled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter, the fourth dimension, and wrinkles in time.

Pearson's relativity was based on idealism, in the sense of ideas or pictures in a mind. He stated, "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind..." "In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." "Law in the scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man."

Pearson achieved widespread recognition across a range of disciplines and his membership of, and awards from, various professional bodies reflects this:

1896: elected FRS: Fellow of the Royal Society
1898: awarded the Darwin Medal
1911: awarded the honorary degree of LLD from the University of St Andrews
1911: awarded a DSc from University of London
1920: offered the OBE
1932: awarded the Rudolf Virchow medal by the Berliner Anthropologische Gesellschaft
1935: offered a knighthood

He was also elected an Honorary Fellow of King's College Cambridge, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, University College London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Member of the Actuaries' Club.

Pearson's work was all-embracing in the wide application and development of mathematical statistics, and encompassed the fields of biology, epidemiology, anthropometry, medicine, psychology and social history. In 1901, with Walter Frank Raphael Weldon and Francis Galton, he founded the journal Biometrika whose object was the development of statistical theory. He edited this journal until his death. Among those who assisted Pearson in his research were a number of female mathematicians who included Beatrice Mabel Cave-Browne-Cave and Frances Cave-Browne-Cave. He also founded the journal Annals of Eugenics in 1925. He published the Drapers' Company Research Memoirs largely to provide a record of the output of the Department of Applied Statistics not published elsewhere.

Pearson's thinking underpins many of the 'classical' statistical methods which are in common use today.

Books from Karl Pearson

The Grammar of Science

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Groundwork of Eugenics

4.1/5 ( ratings)

National Life from the Standpoint of Science

2.8/5 ( ratings)

The Function of Science in the Modern State

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Eugenics and Public Health: A Lecture Delivered at the York Congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute, July 30th, 1912 (Classic Reprint)

4.6/5 ( ratings)

A First Study of the Statistics of Pulmonary Tuberculosis (Classic Reprint)

4/5 ( ratings)

The Ethic of Freethought: And Other Addresses and Essays (Classic Reprint)

5/5 ( ratings)

The Chances of Death and Other Studies in Evolution, Vol. 1 of 2 (Classic Reprint)

5/5 ( ratings)

The Chances of Death, and Other Studies in Evolution; Volume 2

5/5 ( ratings)

The New Werther

5/5 ( ratings)

Socialism, in Theory and Practice: Being a Lecture Delivered to a Working Class Audience (Classic Reprint)

5/5 ( ratings)

On The Graphics Of Metal Arches, With Special Reference To The Relative Strength Of Two-pivoted, Three-pivoted And Built-in Metal Arches

5/5 ( ratings)

QUESTIONS OF DAY & OF FRAY (The History of hereditarian thought)

5/5 ( ratings)

A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials: From Galilei to the Present Time, Volume 2, Part 1

5/5 ( ratings)

A Monograph on Albinism in Man Volume Atlas, Part 1

5/5 ( ratings)

A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials: From Galilei to the Present Time, Volume 2, part 2

5/5 ( ratings)

A Monograph on Albinism in Man; Volume Atlas, Part 1

5/5 ( ratings)

A Monograph on Albinism in Man

5/5 ( ratings)

A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials: From Galilei to the Present Time, Volume 2, part 2

5/5 ( ratings)

The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics (Classic Reprint)

5/5 ( ratings)
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