Person: Bertillon, Adolphe-Louis Jacques

Jacques Bertillon was a French statistician who applied statistics to social sciences.

Both Jacques and Alphonse achieved fame and collaborated on a number of projects.
Bertillon was educated as a physician before he turned his attention to statistics, but he invariably applied his statistics techniques to problems of a social nature.
Some of Bertillon's early statistical work involved comparative studies of divorce rates and suicide rates between different countries which he published in Annales de démographie internationale; he became the editor of the journal in 1882.
A study of the causes of death led him to introduce the 'Bertillon classification'.
Of course, Bertillon was well known to members of the government being on various bodies such as the Higher Council of Statistics, which advised the government on statistical matters, and the Committee on Public Hygiene.
Certainly not all of Bertillon's arguments have been accepted.
Bertillon also ventured a guess about why sickness rates were higher in English societies: those societies were richer and thus better able to pay benefits.
But Bertillon is guilty of being systematically inattentive to the significant details of the thing he purported to study.

Born 11 November 1851, Paris, France. Died 7 July 1922, Valmondois, near Paris, France.

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O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive