I have a new historical figure that I want to invite to my imaginary dinner party with fascinating but dead people I wish I could talk to. And that’s this guy, Karl Pearson. A British Germanophile who lived from 1857-1936, Karl was a quirky, free-thinking mathematical giant in the field of statistics. He had a voracious appetite for intellectual topics from wildly disparate areas that is reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci, who was cutting-edge for his day in both good ways and bad . . .
Karl Pearson formally studied law, and then got interested in Medieval Germanic folklore and even received a professorship at Cambridge University to lecture in it. But his passion for mathematics proved more pressing for him, and Pearson eventually became a professor of geometry and statistics at the University College of London.
It is difficult to imagine the discipline of mathematical statistics without Pearson — just go to Wikipedia if you want the extensive list of his contributions, but he pretty much came up with the idea of standard deviation and the mathematical structure of correlation. He also led the way in developing modern data visualization.
About his varied interests, he wrote: “I rush from science to philosophy, and from philosophy to our old friends the poets; and then, over-weary by too much idealism, I fancy I become too practical in returning to science. Have you ever attempted to conceive all there is in the world worth knowing- that not one subject in the universe is unworthy of study? . . . “.
Pearson’s personal charisma allowed him to get away with being an outspoken atheist, socialist, and feminist — all unpopular positions in his time. He even started a group called the Men and Women’s Club to discuss sexual relationships among the genders, very avant-garde indeed. Unfortunately, he embraced racist eugenics ideas that were popular among many Europeans of his day. One wonders what he would think if he were still alive.
