1857–1936 English mathematician and statistician who provided the foundation to the modern theory of mathematical statistics.
Keywords: mathematical statistics; eugenics; W.F.R. Weldon; Francis Galton; University College London
Pearson, Karl
ME Magnello, Wellcome Institute, London, UK
Published online: April 2001
DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0002455
| Further Reading | |
| book Pearson K (1892) The Grammar of Science (1st edn). London: Adam and Charles Black. | |
| book Pearson K (1914–1930) The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, 3 vols. in 4 parts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. | |
| book Eisenhart C (1974) Karl Pearson. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 10, pp. 447–473. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. | |
| book Hilts V (1981) Statist and Statistician. Arno Press: New York. (Reprint of his Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1967.) | |
| book Mackenzie D (1981) Statistics in Britain 1865–1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. | |
| other Magnello ME (1993) Karl Pearson: Evolutionary Biology and the Emergence of a Modern Theory of Statistics. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. | |
| Magnello ME (1996) Karl Pearson's Gresham Lectures: W.F.R. Weldon, speciation and the origins of Pearsonian statistics. British Journal for the History of Science 29: 43–64. | |
| Magnello ME (1998) Karl Pearson's mathematisation of inheritance. From Galton's ancestral heredity to Mendelian genetics (1895–1909). Annals of Science, 55: 35–94. | |
| book Magnello ME (1998) "Karl Pearson". In: Armitage P and Colton T Encyclopedia of Biostatistics, vol. 4, pp. 3308–3315. Chichester, UK: Wiley. | |
| book Magnello ME (1999) "The non-correlation of biometrics and eugenics: Rival forms of laboratory work in Karl Pearson's career at University College London". Part 1, History of Science 37(March), 79–106; Part 2, History of Science 37(June), 123–150. | |
| book Norton B (1978) Karl Pearson and the Galtonian Tradition: Studies in the Rise of Quantitative Social Biology. Doctoral dissertation, University of London. | |
| Norton B (1978) Karl Pearson and statistics: the social origin of scientific innovation. Social Studies of Science 8: 3–34. | |
| book Pearson E (1936–1938) "Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his Life and Work". Part 1, 1857–1905, Biometrika, (1936) 193–257; Part 2, 1906–1936; (1938) 161–248. (Reprinted by Cambridge University Press: 1938). | |
| book Porter TM (1986) The Rise of Statistical Thinking. 1820–1900. Princeton: University Press. | |
| book Stigler SM (1986) The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. | |
