Adolphe Quetelet
1796 – 1874 · aged 78
Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist (1796-1874)
- Born
- 22 Feb 1796 · Ghent
- Died
- 17 Feb 1874 · Brussels
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 22 Feb 1796BornBorn in Ghent
- 1832 – 1874RoleDirector
- 1835AwardFellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- 1837AwardFellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1839AwardForeign Member of the Royal Society
- 1846AwardHonorary member of the Physics Association (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
- 17 Feb 1874DiedDied in Brussels
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1796 – 1874).
- 1812 – 1815War of 1812
- 1814 – 1815Congress of Vienna
- 1853 – 1856Crimean War
- 1857 – 1858Indian Rebellion of 1857
- 1870 – 1871Franco-Prussian War
Biography
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (French: [kətlɛ] ; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences. His name is sometimes spelled with an accent as Quételet.
He also founded the science of anthropometry and developed the body mass index (BMI) scale, originally called the Quetelet Index. His work on measuring human characteristic to determine the ideal l'homme moyen ("the average man") played a key role in the origins of eugenics.
Text from the Wikipedia article Adolphe Quetelet, CC BY-SA 4.0
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