Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology. Pearson was also a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics, and his thought is an example of what is today described as scientific racism. Pearson was a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton. He edited and completed both William Kingdon Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) and Isaac Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity, Vol. 1 (1886–1893) and Vol. 2 (1893), following their deaths.
Early life and education
Pearson was born in Islington, London, into a Quaker family. His father was William Pearson QC of the Inner Temple, and his mother Fanny (née Smith), and he had two siblings, Arthur and Amy. Pearson attended University College School, followed by King's College, Cambridge, in 1876 to study mathematics, graduating in 1879 as Third Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. He then travelled to Germany to study physics at the University of Heidelberg under G. H. Quincke and metaphysics under Kuno Fischer. He next visited the University of Berlin, where he attended the lectures of the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond on Darwinism (Emil was a brother of Paul du Bois-Reymond, the mathematician). Pearson also studied Roman Law, taught by Bruns and Mommsen, medieval and 16th century German Literature, and Socialism. He became an accomplished historian and Germanist and spent much of the 1880s in Berlin, Heidelberg, Vienna, Saig bei Lenzkirch, and Brixlegg. He wrote on Passion plays, religion, Goethe, Werther, as well as sex-related themes, and was a founder of the Men and Women's Club.
thumb|right|Pearson with Sir Francis Galton, 1909 or 1910
Pearson was offered a Germanics post at King's College, Cambridge. Comparing Cambridge students to those he knew from Germany, Karl found German students inathletic and weak. He wrote to his mother, "I used to think athletics and sport was overestimated at Cambridge, but now I think it cannot be too highly valued."
On returning to England in 1880, Pearson first went to Cambridge:
In his first book, The New Werther, Pearson gives a clear indication of why he studied so many diverse subjects:
Pearson then returned to London to study law, emulating his father. Quoting Pearson's own account: