Page 636 - Probability and Statistical Inference

14. Appendix 613

Mathematics at the University College London in 1885 where he stayed through-
out his career. In 1911, he moved to the Chair of Eugenics which was newly
established.
Karl Pearson was an established mathematician with interests in other fields,
including physics, law, genetics, history of religion and literature. Around
1885, he started formulating problems arising from observational studies and
systematically developed analysis of data. W. F. R. Weldon and F. Galton
influenced his thinking process significantly. At one time, he was consumed
by Galton’s Natural Inheritance from 1889.
Karl Pearson published an astonishingly large volume of original papers in
genetics, evolution, biometry, eugenics, anthropology, astronomy, and other
areas. His contributions on moments, correlations, association, system of
frequency curves, probable errors of moments and product moments, and
Chi-square goodness-of-fit, among his other discoveries, have become a part
of the folklore in statistics. Stigler (1989) throws more light on the invention
of correlation. He created the preliminary core of statistics. He was the nucleus
in the movement of systematic statistical thinking when it was essentially
unheard of. (K.) Pearson (1900) has been included in the Breakthroughs in
Statistics, Volume II [Johnson and Kotz (1993)].
Weldon, Galton and (K.) Pearson started the journal, Biometrika, whose
first issue came out in October 1901. Karl Pearson edited the journal until
1936. He resigned from the Galton Chair in 1933 and his department was split
into two separate departments. His son, Egon Pearson became the Reader
and Head of a separate statistics department whereas R. A. Fisher was ap-
pointed as the new Galton Professor.
K. Pearson received many honors, including the election (1896) to the
Royal Society and was awarded the Darwin Medal in 1898. Egon Pearson’s
(1938) monograph, Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his
Life and Work, is fascinating to read. One may also look at the entry [David
(1968)] on Karl Pearson, included in the International Encyclopedia of Sta-
tistics for more information. Karl Pearson died on April 27, 1936 in
Coldharbour, Surrey.
C. R. Rao: Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao was born on September
10, 1920, in Karnataka, India. He received M.A. (1940) in mathematics
from the Andhra University, another M.A. (1943) in statistics from the
University of Calcutta, Ph.D. (1948) and Sc.D. (1965) from the Univer-
sity of Cambridge. R. A. Fisher was Rao’s adviser for his Ph.D. thesis in
Cambridge. Fisher told Rao to find his own research problem. Rao worked
by himself on discriminant analysis and classification problems related to
his work on anthropology at the museum in King’s College. Rao (1992b)
recalled that when he showed his completed thesis to Fisher, he was told