Adolphe Quetelet

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Adolphe Quetelet

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (born February 22, 1796 in Ghent , †  February 17, 1874 in Brussels ) was a Belgian astronomer and statistician .

Life

His mother's name was Anne Françoise and was née van de Velde . After his father François Augustin Jacques Henri Quetelet (1756–1803) died early, Adolphe Quetelet had to deal with building his own existence at a young age. Quetelet studied in Ghent and in 1815 Professor of Mathematics . At the University of Ghent in 1819 he presented his dissertation on conic sections , De quibusdam locis geometricis nec non de curva focali . He later continued to work on it with Germinal Pierre Dandelin . That is why the mathematical theorem on which Dandelin's spheres are based is also called “Théorème de Dandelin-Quetelet” or “Théorème belge sur la section conique” (Belgian theorem about conic sections) in French.

In 1819 he came for a short time to the Athenaeum in Brussels and on February 24, 1820 at the Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles , where in 1836 he also became professor of astronomy and mathematics at the War School . From 1826 Quetelet worked at the Belgian National Statistics Office. In 1828 he became director of the built under his direction observatory , the Observatoire Royal de Belgique .

His work in the State Statistical Office and his acquaintance with the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace aroused Quetelet's interest in the calculation of probability . He tried to apply this knowledge to new areas, such as meteorology and geomagnetism .

In 1841 Quetelet was appointed President of the Central Statistical Commission for Belgium .

Quetelet had earned a great reputation for his social statistics and anthropometric work. He tried to fathom both the physical and the moral manifestations of individual and community life. In doing so, he often proceeded purely mechanically, and his methods were questioned during his lifetime. So he carried out a study on the distribution of the values ​​of the human chest size. The values ​​observed in 5,738 Scottish soldiers resulted in a normal distribution .

Quetelet continued to look for statistical characteristics of life expectancy or character and social characteristics such as the propensity for writing or crime. He discovered that many of these properties are normally distributed . Quetelet summarized this under the ideal type of the middle man (French: homme moyen ). He called this area of ​​knowledge founded by him social physics .

Quetelet is now considered to be the founder of modern social statistics. Among other things, he organized the first census in Belgium in 1846 . He also founded various scientific societies and tried to improve the international exchange among scientists from different countries.

On September 20, 1824, Quetelet married Cécile Virginie Curtet, the daughter of the French doctor François-Antoine Curtet (1763-1830) in Brussels. Her salon later became a meeting place for numerous scholars and artists with an international reputation.

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet died on February 17, 1874 in Brussels, where the Belgian Academy erected a monument to him in 1880 (a seated marble figure by Charles Auguste Fraikin ).

effect

Quetelet's investigations into the human body had a great influence on Alphonse Bertillon , who, based on his investigations, laid the foundations of his system for personal identification, later called Bertillonage .

In his anthropometry, Quetelet developed body indicators for "average" people, of which the Quetelet index (body mass index) is still used today.

It is his great merit that he has shown that the apparent coincidences of social life have an inner necessity through their periodic repetition and periodic averaging. However, Karl Marx missed an interpretation of the same.

Adolphe Quetelet developed an explanation for the Queteletschen rings named after him .

Honors

Since 1820 he was a member and since 1834 permanent secretary of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . In 1837 Quetelet was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences , in 1838 a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and in 1839 a foreign member of the Royal Society . In 1835 he became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

In 1832 he was appointed a corresponding member of the Prussian and in 1854 a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . The moon crater Quetelet and the asteroid (1239) Queteleta are named after him.

Fonts

  • Astronomie élémentaire , 2 vols., Brussels 1826
  • Positions de physique , 3 vols., Brussels 1827 (French reprint 2010)
  • Notes extraites d'un voyage scientifique, fait en Allemagne pendant l'été 1829 , Bruxelles, 1830
  • Recherches sur la réproduction et la mortalité et sur la population de la Belgique , Brussels 1832
  • Statistique des tribunaux de la Belgique , Brussels 1833
  • (Ed.) Annales de l'observatoire de Bruxelles , Brussels 1834 ff.
  • (Ed.) Annuaire de l'observatoire Royal de Bruxelles , Brussels 1834 ff.
  • Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou essai de physique sociale , 2 vols., Paris 1835 (German on man and the development of his faculties 1838; English A treatise on man and the development of his faculties )
  • Sur l'influence des saisons sur la mortalité aux différens ages dans la Belgique , Brussels 1838
  • On the theory of probabilités apliquée aux sciences morales et politique. Lettres au duc de Saxe-Coburg et Gotha , Brussels 1846
  • Du système sociale et des lois qui le régissent , Paris 1848
  • Sur le climat de la Belgique , 2 vols., Brussels 1849–1857
  • Théorie des probabilités , Brussels 1853
  • Histoire des sciences mathématiques et physiques chez les Belges , Brussels 1864
  • Science mathématiques et physiques chez les Belges au commenceent du 19 e siècle , Brussels 1866
  • Physique sociale ou essai sur le développement des facultés de l'homme , Brussels 1869
  • Anthropométrie ou mesure des différentes facultés de l'homme , Brussels 1870

Web links

Commons : Adolphe Quételet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Brébois: Paul Jean Clays - Genealogy 7 February 2018 called on March 17, 2019
  2. ↑ 1965: Jean de Launois, "Descendance belge de Christophe Curtet, notaire à Chaumont (Haute-Savoie)", Présence savoisienne en Belgique sous le Consulat et l'Empire dans De Schakel, année 1965, n ° 1, pp.11 à 14th
  3. ↑ Anthropométrie ou mesure des différentes facultés de l'homme . Brussels 1870
  4. ^ Marx to Kugelmann, London, March 3, 1869. In: Karl Marx: Briefe an Kugelmann. Publishing house JHW Dietz Nachf. Berlin. P. 64
  5. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 194.
  6. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Adolphe Quetelet
  7. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 1, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Quetelet, Adolphe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian astronomer and statistician
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Ghent
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 1874
Place of death Brussels