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'''Karl PEARSON'''
<ref> Abridged version of an article 
in ''Encyclopedia of
Biostatistics </ref>
, Eds. P. Armitage and T. Colton, and published by kind permission
of John Wiley &amp; Sons Ltd.''

b. 27  March 1857 - d  27 April 1936

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Summary.''' Karl Pearson was Founder of the Biometric School. He 
made prolific contributions to statistics, eugenics and to the scientific method.
Stimulated 
by the applications of W.F.R. Weldon and F. Galton he laid the foundations of
much of modern mathematical statistics.

Founder of biometrics, Karl Pearson was one of the
principal architects of
the modern theory of mathematical statistics. He was a polymath whose
interests ranged from astronomy, mechanics, meteorology and physics to the
biological sciences in particular (including anthropology, eugenics,
evolutionary biology, heredity and medicine). In addition to these scientific
pursuits, he undertook the study of  German folklore and literature,
the history of the Reformation and  German humanists (especially Martin
Luther). Pearson's
writings were prodigious: he published more than 650 papers in his lifetime,
of which 400 are statistical. Over a period of 28 years, he founded and
edited 6 journals and was a co-founder (along with Weldon and Galton) of the
journal ''Biometrika''.  University College London houses the main set of
Pearson's collected papers which consist of 235 boxes containing family
papers, scientific manuscripts and 16,000 letters.

	Largely owing to his interests in evolutionary biology, Pearson
created, almost single-handedly, the modern theory of statistics in his
Biometric School at University College London from 1892 to 1903 (which was
practised in the Drapers' Biometric Laboratory from 1903-1933). These
developments were underpinned by Charles Darwin's ideas of biological
variation and `statistical' populations of species - arising from the
impetus of statistical and experimental work of his colleague and closest
friend, the Darwinian zoologist, [[Weldon, Walter Frank Raphael|W.F.R. Weldon]]. Additional
developments emerged from [[Galton, Francis|Francis Galton]]'s law of ancestral
heredity. Pearson also devised a separate methodology for problems of
eugenics in the Galton Eugenics Laboratory from 1907-1933. 

	In his creation of biometrics, out of which the discipline of
mathematical statistics had developed by the end  of the nineteenth century,
Pearson  introduced a new vernacular for statistics (including such terms
as the standard deviation, mode,  homoscedasticity,
heteroscedasticity, kurtosis and the product-moment correlation coefficient).

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Family and Education '''

Karl  was the second of three children born to William Pearson and Fanny
Smith. His father was a barrister and QC. The Pearsons were of Yorkshire
descent.  They were a family of dissenters
and  of Quaker stock. By the time he was in his 20s, Pearson  had rejected
Christianity and  had become a Freethinker which involved the 'rejection
of  all myths as explanation and the frank acceptance of all ascertained
truths to the relation of the finite to the infinite'.
Politically, he was a socialist whose outlook was
similar to the Fabians, but he never joined the Fabian Society.
Socialism was a form of morality
for Pearson; the moral was social and the immoral was anti-social in
conduct.

Pearson's father William was a very hard-working and  taciturn man.
In a letter to Karl, his elder brother Arthur described
the experience of being home with their father as 'simply purgatory...the
governor never spoke a word'. 

	When they went up to Cambridge, at least one of the Pearson boys was
expected to read mathematics. The Cambridge Mathematics Tripos was, at that
time,  the most prestigious degree in any British university. Although his
father urged him to read mathematics, Arthur settled on Classics. Thus when
Karl was 15 years old, his father was looking for a good Cambridge Wrangler
to prepare him  for the Mathematics Tripos.

	By the Spring of 1875, Pearson was ready to take the entrance
examinations at various colleges at Cambridge. His  first choice was Trinity
College, where he failed the entrance exam; his second choice was King's
College from whom he received an Open Fellowship in April 1875. Pearson
found that the highly competitive and demanding system leading up to the
Mathematical Tripos was the tonic he needed. Though he had been a rather
delicate and sickly child with a nervous disposition, he came to life in this
environment and  his health improved.
Students of the Mathematics Tripos were also
expected to take regular exercise as a means of preserving a robust
constitution and regulating the working day.

	Pearson took the Mathematics Tripos examination in January 1879.
He graduated with honours
being the Third Wrangler; subsequently, he received a fellowship from King's
College which he held for seven years.

	A couple of weeks after Pearson had taken his degree, he began to work
in Professor James Stuart's Engineering workshop and read philosophy during
the Lent Term in preparation for a trip to Germany. 

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Germany and University  College London'''

Pearson's time in Germany was a period of self-discovery, philosophically
and professionally. While in Heidelberg Pearson read Berkeley, Fichte,
Locke, Kant and Spinoza, but he subsequently abandoned philosophy.
He studied physics under Quincke and metaphysics under Kuno
Fischer. He considered becoming a mathematical physicist, but decided
not to pursue this. He went to
Berlin to hear Kirchoff and Helmholtz and began to study Roman Law.
A year later, he took up rooms at the Inner Temple 
and read law at Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the Bar at the end of 1881
and   practised the law for a very short time only. Still searching for some
direction when he returned to  London, Pearson lectured on socialism, Marx
and Lassalle at the working men's clubs and on  Martin Luther at Hampstead
from 1880 to 1881.

	By 1882 Pearson had decided that he did not want to pursue the law.
From 1882 to 1884, he lectured on German society 
from the medieval period up to the sixteenth century. He  became so competent
in German that by  the late spring of 1884, he was offered a post in German at
Cambridge.

	Nevertheless, Pearson found all  these pursuits dissatisfying
and he then began
to write some papers on the theory of elastic solids and fluids as well as
some mathematical physics papers on optics and ether squirts. 
Between 1879 and 1884 he applied for more than six mathematical posts and he
received the Chair of `Mechanism and Applied Mathematics' at University
College London (UCL) in June of 1884.

During Pearson's first six years at UCL, he taught mathematical physics,
hydrodynamics, magnetism, electricity and his speciality, elasticity, to
engineering students.

<!-- \noindent -->
'''The Gresham Lectures on Geometry and Curve-Fitting'''

Pearson was a founding member of the Men's and Women's Club  established in
1885 `for the free and unreserved discussion of all matters in any way
connected with the mutual position and relation of men and women'. Among the
various members was Marie Sharpe whom he married in June 1890. They had three
children, Sigrid, Helga and Egon. Six months after his marriage, he took up
another teaching post in the Gresham Chair of Geometry which he held for
three years concurrently with his post at UCL. As Gresham Professor, he was
responsible for giving 12 lectures a year. These were free to the public.
Between February 1891 to November 1893, Pearson delivered 38 lectures.
His first eight lectures formed the basis of his book, ''The Grammar of
Science'' which was published in several languages.

	Pearson's earliest teaching of statistics can, in fact,  be found in
his lecture of 18 November 1891 when he discussed graphical statistics and
the mathematical theory of probability with a particular interest in actuarial
methods. Two days later he introduced the histogram - a term he coined to
designate a 'time-diagram' to be used for historical purposes. He introduced
the standard deviation in his Gresham lecture of 31 January 1893. Pearson's
early Gresham lectures on statistics were influenced by the work of [[Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro|Edgeworth]],
[[Jevons, William Stanley|Jevons]] and [[Venn, John|Venn]]. Up until November 1893, these lectures covered fairly
conventional statistical and probability methods.  Whilst the material in
these lectures was not original in content, Pearson's approach in teaching was
highly innovative. In one of his lectures,  he  scattered 10,000 pennies over
the lecture room floor and asked his students to count the number of  heads or
tails.

	Pearson's last twelve Gresham Lectures signified a turning-point in
his career owing, in particular, to his relationship with Weldon - who was the
first biologist Pearson met who was interested in using a statistical approach
for problems of Darwinian evolution. Their emphasis on Darwinian population
of species not only implied the necessity of systematically  measuring
variation, but it prompted the re-conceptualisation of statistical
populations. Moreover, it was this mathematisation of Darwin which led to a
paradigmatic shift for Pearson from the Aristotelian essentialism underpinning
the earlier use and development of social and vital  statistics. Weldon's
questions not only provided the impetus for Pearson's  seminal statistical
work, but this led eventually  to the creation of the Biometric School at UCL.

	In Pearson' s first published statistical paper of 26 October 1893, he
introduced the method of moments as a means of curve fitting asymmetrical
distributions. One of his aims in developing the method of moments was to
provide a general method for determining the values of the parameters of a
frequency distribution. 
In 1895 Pearson developed a general formula to use for subsets of
six types of frequency curves.
In his first supplement in 1901, he defined two further types and a
final two were added in his second supplement in 1916. Many of his curves
were J-shaped, U-shaped and skewed. Pearson derived all of his curves from a
differential equation whose parameters were found from the moments of the
distribution. As Churchill Eisenhart remarked in 1974, `Pearson's family of
curves did much to dispel the almost religious acceptance of the normal
distribution as the mathematical model of variation of biological, physical
and social phenomena'. 

<!-- \noindent -->
'''The Biometric School'''

Following the  success of his Gresham lectures, Pearson began to teach
statistics to students at UCL in October of 1894. By 1895
he worked out the mathematical
properties of  the product-moment correlation coefficient (which measures the
relationship between two continuous variables) and simple regression (used
for the linear prediction between two continuous variables). By then, Francis
Galton had determined graphically the idea of correlation and regression for
the normal distribution only.

	In this seminal paper on `Regression, Heredity and Panmixia' in 1896,
Pearson introduced matrix algebra into statistical theory.
In the same paper, Pearson also introduced the following statistical
methods: eta ($\eta$) as a measure for  a curvilinear relationship, the
standard
error of an estimate, multiple regression and multiple and partial
correlation, and he also devised the coefficient of variation as a measure of 
the ratio of a standard deviation to the corresponding mean  expressed as a
percentage.

Pearson introduced various methods of
correlation. By the end of the nineteenth century he began to consider the
relationship between two discrete variables. In 1900,  he devised the
tetrachoric correlation and the phi-coefficient for dichotomous variables. 
The tetrachoric correlation requires that both $X$ and $Y$ represent continuous,
normally distributed and linearly related variables whereas the phi-coefficient
was designed for classes having qualitative attributes.
Nine years later, he devised the biserial correlation when one variable is
continuous and the other is discontinuous.  With his son Egon, he devised the
polychoric correlation in 1922 (which is very similar to canonical correlation
today). Though not all of Pearson's correlational methods have survived him,
a number of these methods are still the principal tools used by
psychometricians for test construction. Following the publication of his first
three statistical papers in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
Pearson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896. He was awarded the
Darwin Medal from the Royal Society in 1898.

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Pearson's chi-square tests'''

	At the turn of the century, Pearson reached a fundamental breakthrough
in his development of a modern theory of statistics when he found the exact
chi-square distribution from the family of Gamma distributions and devised
the chi-square $({\chi}^2 , P)$ goodness of fit test. The test was constructed to
compare observed frequencies in an empirical distribution with expected
frequencies in a theoretical distribution to determine `whether a reasonable
graduation had been achieved' (i.e., one with an acceptable probability).

	 Four years later, he extended this to the analysis of multiple
contingency tables and introduced the ''mean square contingency coefficient''
which he also termed the chi-square test of independence (which R.A. Fisher
termed  the chi-square statistic in 1923).
	Pearson's conception of contingency led at once to the generalisation
of the notion of the association of two attributes developed by his former
student, [[Yule, George Udny|G. Udny Yule]]. Individuals could now be classed into more than two
alternate  groups or into many groups with exclusive attributes. The
contingency coefficient and the chi-square test of independence could then be
used to determine the extent to which two such systems agreed.

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Pearson's four laboratories'''

Pearson set up the Drapers' Biometric Laboratory in 1903 following  a grant
from the Worshipful  Drapers' Company (who funded Pearson annually for work in
this laboratory  until his retirement in 1933).The methodology incorporated in
the Drapers' Biometric Laboratory was twofold: the first was mathematical,
and included the use of Pearson's statistical methods, matrix algebra and
analytical solid geometry. The second involved the use of such instruments
as integrators, analysers, curve-plotters, the cranial coordinatograph,
silhouettes and cameras. The problems investigated by the biometricians
included natural selection,  Mendelian genetics and Galton's law of ancestral
inheritance,  craniometry, physical anthropology and theoretical aspects of
mathematical statistics. By 1915, Pearson established the first degree course
in mathematical statistics in Britain.

	Though Pearson did not accept the generality of Mendelism, he did not
reject it completely as is commonly believed. When William Bateson published
his fiercely polemical attack on Weldon in 1902, Bateson saw Mendelism as a
tool for discontinuous variation only.  As a biometrician, most of the
variables that Pearson and his co-workers analysed were continuous and only
occasionally did they examine discontinuous variables. Whilst Pearson and
Weldon used Galton's law of ancestral inheritance for continuous variables,
they used Mendelism for discontinuous variables. Indeed, Pearson argued that
his chi-square test of independence was the most appropriate statistical tool
for the analysis of Mendel's discrete data for dominant and recessive alleles
(such as colour of eyes where brown is dominant and blue is recessive). Even
today, Pearson's chi-square tests remain the most widely used technique for
analysing Mendelian data.

	A year after Pearson had established the Biometric Laboratory, the
Drapers' Company gave him a grant so that he could establish an
Astronomical Laboratory.  Pearson was interested in determining
the correlations of stellar rotations, and the variability in stellar parallax.
He was also instrumental in setting up a degree course in astronomy
in 1914 at UCL.

	In 1907, Francis Galton (who was then 85 years old) wanted to step
down as Director from the Eugenics Record Office which he had set up three
years earlier, and he asked Pearson if he would take it on. 
Pearson agreed reluctantly.  He renamed  the office the Galton Eugenics
Laboratory when he became its director. Pearson made very little use of his
biometric methods in this Laboratory; instead he developed a completely
different methodology for problems relating to eugenics. This methodology was
underpinned by the use of actuarial death rates and by a very highly
specialised use of family pedigrees assembled in an attempt to discover the
inheritance of various diseases (which included, for example, 
alcoholism, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, paralysis and  pulmonary
tuberculosis).
	These family pedigrees became the vehicle through which Pearson could 
communicate statistical ideas to the  medical community by stressing the
importance of using quantitative methods for medical research. This tool
enabled doctors to move away from concentrating on individual pathological
cases or `types' and to see, instead, a wide  range of pathological variation
of the disease (or condition) of the doctors' speciality.

	In the spring of 1909, Galton was discussing the future of the
Eugenics Laboratory with Pearson. Whilst Galton thought that Pearson would
have been `the most suitable man for the first Galton Professor',  Pearson
let Galton know that he was `wholly unwilling to give up superintendence of
the Biometric Laboratory [he] had founded and confine [his] work to Eugenics
Research'. A month later, Galton added a codicil to his will stating that he
desired that the first Professor of the post should be offered to Pearson on
such condition that Pearson could continue to run his Biometric Laboratory. 
After Galton's death in 1911 Pearson relinquished the Goldsmid Chair of 
Applied Mathematics after 27 years of tenure to take up the Galton Chair. The
Drapers' Biometric and the Galton Eugenics laboratories, which continued to
receive separate funding, then became incorporated into the Department of
Applied Statistics.

	Pearson then proceeded to raise funding for a new building  for his
Department of Applied Statistics.  In the early summer of 1914, the new
laboratory was complete and preparations were underway for the occupation and
fitting up of the public museum and the Anthropometric Laboratory. It was
hoped that the building would be occupied by October 1915.  These developments
and further biometric work were shattered by the onset of the First War. The
new laboratory building was taken over by the  government to be used as a
military hospital. Pearson and his co-workers took on special war duties. They
produced statistical charts for the Board of Trade's Labour Department as well
as for its Census Production. Pearson was also involved  with elaborate
calculations of anti-air craft guns and bomb trajectories.
It was not until  December 1922 that Pearson's building was
reoccupied.

	His wife, Marie Sharpe, died in 1928 and in 1929 he married Margaret
Victoria Child, a co-worker in the Biometric Laboratory. Pearson was made
Emeritus Professor in 1933.  From his retirement until
his death in 1936, he published 34 articles and notes and continued to edit
''Biometrika''.  Pearson was offered an OBE in 1920 and a knighthood
in 1933, but
he refused both honours. He also declined the Royal Statistical Society Guy
Medal in their centenary year in 1934. Pearson believed  that `all medals and
honours should be given to young men,  they encourage them when they begin to
doubt whether  their work was of value'. 

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====References====
{|
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|    Eisenhart, Churchill. (1974). Karl Pearson. ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', 10, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, pp. 447-73. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|  Hilts, Victor. (1981). Statist and Statistician.  Arno Press, New York. Reprint of his PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1967. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|  Mackenzie, Donald. (1981). ''Statistics in Britain 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge''. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|  Magnello, M. Eileen. (1993). Karl Pearson: Evolutionary Biology and the Emergence of a Modern Theory of Statistics. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|5}}||valign="top"|  Magnello, M. Eileen. (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.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|6}}||valign="top"|  Magnello, M. Eileen. (forthcoming). Karl Pearson's mathematisation of inheritance. From Galton's ancestral heredity to Mendelian Genetics (1895-1909). ''Annals of Science''. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|7}}||valign="top"|  Norton, Bernard. (1978). Karl Pearson and Statistics: The Social Origin of Scientific Innovation. ''Social Studies of Science'', '''8''', 3-34. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|8}}||valign="top"|  Pearson, Egon. (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). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|9}}||valign="top"|  Pearson, Karl,  (1914-1930). ''The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton''. 3 vol. in 4 parts, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|10}}||valign="top"|  Porter, Theodore M. (1986). ''The Rise of Statistical Thinking. 1820-1900''. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|11}}||valign="top"|  Semmel, Barnard.  (1958). Karl Pearson: Socialist and Darwinist. ''British Journal of Sociology'', '''9''',  111-125. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|12}}||valign="top"|  Stigler, Steven M. (1986). ''The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900.'' Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
|-
|}
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<references />

Reprinted with permission from
Christopher Charles Heyde and Eugene William Seneta (Editors),
Statisticians of the Centuries, Springer-Verlag Inc., New York, USA.

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]