The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe.

Ch. " (Ibid. He was a proponent of eugenics and a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton.

In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. Karl Pearson FRS (27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) (originally named Carl) was an influential English mathematician who has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.