Biography of a Mathematician: Karl Pearson - Essay Example

Biography of a Mathematician ID] [Lecturer] Karl Pearson is renowned for the establishing the discipline related with mathematical statistics. It was in the year 1911 that he laid the foundation stone for the first university statistics department which was based at the University College London. He is regarded as being the protégé and a proponent of eugenics. Karl Pearson is a biographer of Sir Francis Galton. He has also been acclaimed as a socialist in different movements and times. Karl Pearson was born in London and had two siblings.

Karl Pearson’s mother was from a family that belonged to master mariners who used to sail a number of ships from Hull while his father had had education of law and was known amongst the relevant circles as a successful and established barrister. The earlier parts of Karl Pearson’s education was at the University College School and after he had completed his primary education, he moved on towards the King’s College based in Cambridge so that he could attain education related with mathematics.

(Knight, 1929) He studied medieval and 16th Century German literature at a couple of universities which were based in Germany. Soon after, he was offered a post at Kings College, Cambridge since his studies in the related field was known to one and all and he was quite famous for the same. After this, he took a shot at studying law but was unable to practice it throughout his lifespan. He moved to the field of mathematics immediately and thus became a deputy to the mathematics professor who served at King’s College in London.

He also served as deputy for the professor at the University College in London a couple of years after that. Later on, he was appointed to the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics which was a branch at the University College, London. Within a period of seven years, he was appointed as the Professor of Geometry at the Gresham College where he had a chance to meet up with a famous zoologist by the name of Walter Frank Raphael Weldon who provided Karl Pearson an opportunity to understand unique sets of problems which were related with the quantitative solutions and the like.

In the year 1911, Karl Pearson started to write his definitive biography which consisted of different letters, commentaries, photographs and genealogies to state a few. He refused knighthood in the year 1935. Karl Pearson was renowned for his work in the field of statistics and because of this his contributions are accounted for in his different papers and essays that have been written concerning his work. The development of statistics in the fields of mathematics, biology, medicine, social history and anthropometry are accredited on the shoulders of Karl Pearson.

He was also the founder for the journal Biometrika where the main intention was to show the development of statistical theory more than anything else. He continued to edit this journal until his death. More over, he was also the founder for the journal Annals of Eugenics or now known as the Annals of Human Genetics in the year 1925. (Blake, 1939) Furthermore, he was very active at publishing the Drapers’ Company Research Memoirs. What this does was to provide documentation of the outputs related with the Department of Applied Statistics which were not published ever anywhere else.

Karl Pearson’s work is something that people can take a leaf out of, in the related fields and he must be hailed for his contribution to the mathematical statistics. He died at the age of 79, in 1936 at Coldharbour, Surrey, England. References Blake, William J. (1939). Elements of Marxian Economic Theory and Its Criticism. Cordon Knight, Melvin M. (1929). The Economic Interpretation of History. Adelphi Company Word Count: 592