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Karl Pearson
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English mathematician, biometrician, and eugenicist (1857–1936)
Karl Pearson was an English mathematician and scientist (1857-1936) who developed important statistical methods, including correlation analysis, that became foundational tools for analyzing data across many fields. He also promoted eugenics, a now-discredited ideology about human heredity, which represents a troubling aspect of his legacy alongside his scientific contributions.
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Karl
- Family name
- Pearson
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United Kingdom
- Place of birth
- London
- Educated at
- Heidelberg University
- Employer
- King's College London
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- Quakers
- Doctoral advisor
- Francis Galton
- Doctoral student
- George Udny Yule
- Field of work
- eugenics
- Image
- Karl Pearson.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- partner in business or sport
- Micaiah John Muller Hill
- date of birth
- 1857-03-27
- date of death
- 1936-04-27
- Commons category
- Karl Pearson
- Commons Creator page
- Karl Pearson
- name in native language
- Karl Pearson
- student
- Kirstine Smith
- writing language
- English language
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
Karl Pearson (/ˈpɪərsən/; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. 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.
Early life and education
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Karl Pearson” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.