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Biography of Lambert Adolphe Jacques QuételetName: Lambert Adolphe Jacques QuételetBirth Date: February 22, 1796 Death Date: February 17, 1874 Place of Birth: Ghent, Belgium Nationality: Belgian Gender: Male Occupations: statistician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quételet The Belgian statistician and astronomer Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quételet (1796-1874) is considered the founder of modern statistics and demography.Adolphe Quételet was born in Ghent on Feb. 22, 1796. When he finished secondary school at the age of 17, he took a job teaching mathematics in a secondary school. A professor of mathematics at the newly established University of Ghent influenced Quételet to study mathematics. In 1819 he received his doctorate in mathematics with a dissertation in which he claimed to have discovered a new curve. The work was heralded as an important contribution to analytic geometry.That year Quételet was appointed to the chair of elementary mathematics at the Athenaeum, and shortly thereafter he was elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles-lettres of Brussels. He wrote numerous essays in mathematics and physics, founded and edited a journal, delivered lectures on science in …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…in the gathering of statistical data, and he exerted an international influence on this area. His application of quantitative methods and mathematical techniques has been judged as anticipatory of the guiding principle of contemporary social science, especially his efforts to change statistics from a mere clerical function into an exact science of observation, measurement, and comparison of results. Further Reading Several of Quételet's major works are available in English translation. The best study in English of his significance is Frank H. Hankins, Adolphe Quételet as Statistician (1908), which includes a biographical sketch. See also George Sarton, Sarton on the History of Science, edited by Dorothy Stimson (1962), for the reasons why Sarton considers Quételet rather than Auguste Comte as the "founder of sociology," and Quételet's work On Man and the Development of His Faculties as "one of the greatest books of the nineteenth century." |