1857-1936

British Mathematician

A man of wide-ranging interests, Karl Pearson became the father of statistics by an indirect route that led him from mathematics to other disciplines and back again. Among the innovations associated with his establishment of the discipline was his formulation of the concept of the "standard deviation."

Born in London on March 27, 1857, to William, a lawyer, and Fanny Smith Pearson, the future mathematician was a sickly child. His health forced him to conduct part of his early education at home, but at age 17 he went to Cambridge, and followed this with studies in a wide array of subjects at King's College. These subjects included philosophy, religion, literature, and, mathematics, his major, in which he graduated with honors in 1879.

Over the coming years, Pearson traveled throughout Germany, became a socialist, and in 1884 took a position as Goldsmid Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at...