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Home Appendix Biographies Karl Pearson
See also: Ronald Fisher 

Karl Pearson

Karl Pearson. Source of photo: Wikimedia Commons
Karl Pearson (1857-1936) was one of the major contributors to the development of statistics. In 1911 he founded the Department of Applied Statistics at University College London, which was the first university statistics department in the world. However, Pearson's career as a statistician started comparably late in his life. He studied mathematics, German literature and law. His first published paper dealt with art history. Later in his career he was appointed to chairs at UCL and Gresham College. By the time of his first statistical paper, has had already published about 100 papers on non-mathematical topics.

Pearson's professional focus changed when he got acquainted to R. Weldon, a zoologist who had several problems which required mathematical treatment. Pearson contributed a lot to solve these problems, developing such familiar concepts as standard deviation, correlation and regression, and the chi-square goodness of fit test. Weldon introduced Pearson to Francis Galton who worked on heredity and eugenics. Galton quickly became Pearson's mentor. When Galton died in 1911 he left his estate to the University of London for a Chair of Eugenics. Pearson was appointed to be the first holder of this chair and formed the Department of Applied Statistics, where he stayed until his retirement in 1933.

In 1901 Pearson founded (together with F. Galton and W.F.R. Weldon) the scientific journal Biometrika, whose editor he was until his death 1936.

Home Appendix Biographies Karl Pearson