Adolphe quetelet biography of barack

In Quetelet married the daughter of the French physician M Curtet; they had one son, Ernest, and one daughter. Ernest became an accomplished astronomer, and eventually took over his father's role as Director of the Brussels Observatory. Quetelet loved music and was a reasonable musician; his wife, however, was an excellent musician.

They would entertain guests at their home with music after their regular Saturday and Sunday dinner parties. Quetelet had been sent to Paris at the expense of the state in order that he could gain experience in practical astronomy. For a long time he had been pressing for a Belgium observatory to be set up, but the project progressed rather slowly.

Inon the direction of the King, Quetelet was given the task of choosing instruments for the observatory. Together with Dandelinhe went to London and from there visited universities, observatories and learned societies in England, Scotland, and Ireland seeking advice. Again inthis time accompanied by his wife, he visited astronomers in Holland and Germany, and became familiar with all German observatories.

Next he visited Italy and Sicily in to learn more of the workings of observatories and societies. In he became director of the newly opened Observatory. From this time on, Quetelet lived at the Observatory where he worked on statistical, geophysical, and meteorological data, studied meteor showers and established methods for the comparison and evaluation of the data.

Between and he wrote papers on social statistics. These are the causes we seek to grasp, and when we do know them, we shall be able to ascertain their effects in social matters, just as we ascertain effects from causes in the physical sciences. The significance of this work is discussed in [ 1 ] :- With Quetelet's work of a new era in statistics began.

It presented a new technique of statistics, or, rather, the first technique at all. The material was thoughtfully elaborated, arranged according to certain pre-established principles, and made comparable. There were not very many statistical figures in the book, but each figure reported made sense. For every number, Quetelet tried to find the determining influences, its natural causes, and the perturbations caused by man.

The work gave a description of the average man as both a static and dynamic phenomenon. Influenced by Laplace and FourierQuetelet was the first to use the normal curve other than as an error law. His studies of the numerical consistency of crimes stimulated wide discussion of free will versus social determinism. You can read an extract from Sur l'homme on the conclusions he drew from statistics gathered from the French criminal courts between and He collected data about many such variables.

Quetelet wrote about these values as "ideals" with deviations from them as being less than or more than ideal. He saw the average body as an ideal beauty and something to be desired and his work was influential on Francis Galton who coined the term eugenics.

Adolphe quetelet biography of barack

When Auguste Comte discovered that Quetelet had appropriated the term 'social physics', which Comte had originally introduced, Comte found it necessary to invent the term 'sociologie' sociology because he disagreed with Quetelet's notion that a theory of society could be derived from a collection of statistics. Adolphe Quetelet also had a significant influence on Florence Nightingale who shared with him a religious view of statistics which saw understanding statistics as revealing the work of God in addition to statistics being a force of good administration.

Nightingale met Quetelet in person at the International Statistical Congress in London, and they corresponded for years afterwards. Quetelet was an influential figure in criminology. Along with Andre-Michel Guerryhe helped to establish the cartographic school and positivist schools of criminology which made extensive use of statistical techniques.

Through statistical analysis, Quetelet gained insight into the relationships between crime and other social factors. Among his findings were strong relationships between age and crime, as well as gender and crime. Other influential factors he found included climatepovertyeducationand alcohol consumption, with his research findings published in Of the Development of the Propensity to Crime.

In his text on social physics, he presented his theory of human variance around the averageshowing human traits were distributed according to a normal curve. The existence of such variation provided the basis for later writers, including Darwin, to argue that natural populations contained sufficient variability for artificial or adolphe quetelet biography of barack selection to operate.

In terms of influence over later public health agendas, one of Quetelet's lasting legacies was the establishment of a simple measure for classifying people's weight relative to an ideal for their height. His proposal, the body mass index or Quetelet indexhas endured with minor variations to the present day. The asteroid Queteleta is named after him.

The title of Quetelet professor at Columbia University is awarded in his name. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and sociologist — GhentFrench Republic now Ghent, Belgium. BrusselsBelgium. Biography [ edit ].

Work [ edit ]. Historical trajectory. Bell Doe ex. The family archives have a letter in which Humboldt recommends a young German scholar to Quetelet; this was Theodore Schwann, the founder of cellular theory, who was to pursue a brilliant career in Belgium. As a result of Quetelet's activities, a gigantic network of sources of his correspondence exists, of which there is still no complete inventory.

Thus it was that Quetelet died on the night between the 16th to the 17th of Februaryhaving continued his work in the interests of science till the very end. Log in. Namespaces Page Discussion. Views View View source History. Jump to: navigationsearch. References [1] Actes du colloque Papers collected under the scientific direction of J.

Histoire de la Statistique. Que sais-je? Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Quetelet. The Rise of Statistical Thinking. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Categories : Statprob Biographical. This page was last edited on 25 Februaryat Actes du colloque Among his findings were strong relationships between age and crime, as well as gender and crime.

Other influential factors he found included climate, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption, with his research findings published in Of the Development of the Propensity to Crime. In terms of influence over later public health agendas, was Quetelet's establishment of a simple measure for classifying people's weight relative to an ideal weight for their height.

His proposal, the body mass index or Quetelet indexhas endured with minor variations to the present day. Recherches statistiques sur le royaume des Pays-Bas. The Propensity to Crime. Sur l'emploi de la boussole dans les mines. Sur le climat de la Belgique. Sur la statistique morale et les principes qui doivent en former la base. Sur la physique du globe en Belgique.

In; American Journal of Sociology 92 5 : pp. In: Nephrol. Ian Hacking The Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press, chapters 13—