Karl Pearson

Karl Pearson (March 27, 1857 – April 27, 1936) was a major contributor to the early development of statistics as a serious scientific discipline in its own right. He founded the Department of Applied Statistics at University College London in 1911; it was the first university statistics department in the world.

Biography

Karl Pearson was born in London on the March 27, 1857, the son of barrister William Pearson and Maria, née Sharpe, a relative of the poet Samuel Rogers. He was educated privately at University College School, after which he went to King's College, Cambridge to study mathematics. He then spent part of 1879 and 1880 studying medieval and 16th century German literature at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg – in fact, he became sufficiently knowledgeable in this field that he was offered a post in the German department at Cambridge University.

Related Topics:
March 27 - 1857 - William Pearson - Samuel Rogers - University College School - King's College, Cambridge - 1879 - 1880 - 16th century - German literature - Berlin - Heidelberg - Cambridge University

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His next career move was to Lincoln's Inn, where he read law until 1881 (although he never practised). After this, he returned to mathematics, deputising for the mathematics professor at King's College London in 1881 and for the professor at University College London in 1883. In 1884, he was appointed to the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at University College London. 1891 saw him also appointed to the professorship of Geometry at Gresham College; here he met Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, a zoologist who had some interesting problems requiring quantitative solutions. The collaboration, in biometry and evolutionary theory, was a fruitful one and lasted until Weldon died in 1906. Weldon introduced Pearson to Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who was interested in aspects of evolution such as heredity and eugenics. Pearson became Galton's protégé — his "statistical heir" as some have put it — at times to the verge of hero worship. After Galton's death in 1911, Pearson embarked on producing his definitive biography—a three-volume tome of narrative, letters, genealogies, commentaries, and photographs—published in 1914, 1924, and 1930, with much of Pearson's own financing paying for their print runs. The biography, done "to satisfy myself and without regard to traditional standards, to the needs of publishers or to the tastes of the reading public", triumphed Galton's life, work, and personal heredity, predicting that it was Galton, rather than Charles Darwin, who would be remembered as the most prodigious grandson of Erasmus Darwin (at the time, Darwinian evolution was not enjoying much scientific support, and Pearson was a staunch disciple of Galton's competing biometric approach).

Related Topics:
Lincoln's Inn - Law - 1881 - Mathematics - Professor - King's College London - University College London - 1883 - 1884 - 1891 - Geometry - Gresham College - Walter Frank Raphael Weldon - Biometry - Evolution - 1906 - Charles Darwin - Francis Galton - Eugenics - Hero worship - 1911 - 1914 - 1924 - 1930 - Erasmus Darwin

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When Galton died, he left the residue of his estate to the University of London for a Chair in Eugenics. Pearson was the first holder of this chair, in accordance with Galton's wishes. He formed the Department of Applied Statistics (with financial support from the Drapers' Company), into which he incorporated the Biometric and Galton laboratories. He remained with the department until his retirement in 1933, and continued to work until his death in 1936.

Related Topics:
University of London - Drapers' Company - 1933 - 1936

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Pearson married Maria Sharpe in 1890, and between them they had two daughters and a son. The son, Egon Sharpe Pearson, succeeded him as head of the Applied Statistics Department at University College.

Related Topics:
1890 - Egon Sharpe Pearson

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When the 23 year-old Albert Einstein started a study group, the Olympia Academy, with his two younger friends, Solovine and Habicht, he suggested that the first book to be read was Pearson's The Grammar of Science. This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists. Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he claimed, is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who traveled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter, the fourth dimension, and wrinkles in time.

Related Topics:
Albert Einstein - Olympia Academy - The Grammar of Science - Antimatter - Fourth dimension

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Pearson's relativity was based on idealism, in the sense of ideas or pictures in a mind. "There are many signs," he wrote, "that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists." (Preface to 2nd Ed., The Grammar of Science) Further, he stated, "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind...." "In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." (Ibid., Ch. II, § 6) "Law in the scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man." (Ibid., Ch. III, § 4)

Related Topics:
Relativity - Idealism - Mind - Materialism - The Grammar of Science - Consciousness

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Aside from his professional life, Pearson was active as a prominent freethinker and socialist. He gave lectures on such issues as "the woman's question" (this was the era of the suffragette movement in the UK) and upon Karl Marx. His commitment to socialism and its ideals led him to refuse the offer of being created an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1920, and also to refuse a Knighthood in 1935. In the 1930s he had a protracted feud with R.A. Fisher over a statistical disagreement, which continued after his death through his son.

Related Topics:
Karl Marx - Socialism - Officer of the Order of the British Empire - 1920 - Knighthood - R.A. Fisher

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Pearson's views on eugenics, however, would be considered deeply racist today. According to a BBC report on the history of genetics, "Pearson was a fanatic – a cold, calculating measurer of man who claimed to be a socialist, but loathed the working class." Pearson openly advocated "war" against "inferior races," and saw this as a logical implication of his scientific work on human measurement: "My view – and I think it may be called the scientific view of a nation," he wrote, "– is that of an organized whole, kept up to a high pitch of internal efficiency by insuring that its numbers are substantially recruited from the better stocks, and kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races." He reasoned that, if August Weismann's theory of germ plasm is correct, then the nation is wasting money when it tries to improve people who come from poor stock. Weismann claimed that acquired characteristics could not be inherited. Therefore, training benefits only the trained generation. Their children will not exhibit the learned improvements and, in turn, will need to be improved. "No degenerate and feeble stock will ever be converted into healthy and sound stock by the accumulated effects of education, good laws, and sanitary surroundings. Such means may render the individual members of a stock passable if not strong members of society, but the same process will have to be gone through again and again with their offspring, and this in ever-widening circles, if the stock, owing to the conditions in which society has placed it, is able to increase its numbers." (Introduction, The Grammar of Science).

Related Topics:
Racist - Weismann - The Grammar of Science

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