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Dès l'Antiquité, peut-être même avant de maîtriser l'écriture, les sociétés humaines ont éprouvé le besoin de se dénombrer, se quantifier, s'inventorier, se recenser, se cataloguer. Dans l'Ancien Testament, Jahvé conseille cette pratique mais se la réserve jalousement, tant pour répartir les terres entre les tribus que pour identifier les hommes susceptibles de combattre. Les Égyptiens, les Romains, les Arabes, les Européens, les Américains adoptent cette pratique. Dès que les mathématiques s'en emparent, elle s'impose et devient une puissante arme de gouvernement politique et économique. Elle pénètre la science très précocement et tout particulièrement la médecine. Dès l'aube du XXe siècle, là où s'arrête cet ouvrage, personne ne conteste son envahissante présence et sa toute-puissance.

Profiles living persons in the physical and biological fields, as well as public health scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists.

Like many other scientists, I have long been interested in history. I enjoy reading about the minutiae of its daily unfolding: the coinage, food, clothes, games, literature and habits which characterize a people. I am carried away by the broad sweep of its major events: the wars, famines, migrations, reforms, political swings and scientific advances which shape a society. I know that historians value autobiographical accounts as part of the basic material from which the stuff of history is distilled; this should apply no less to statistical than to political or social history. Modem statistics is a relatively young science; it was while pondering this fact sometime in 1980 that I realized that many of the pioneers of our field could still be called upon to tell their stories. If, however, biographical material about these eminent statisticians was not gathered, then one might lose the chance to gain insight into the origins of many an important statistical development. The remarkable experience of these colleagues could not be readily duplicated. Fired by these thoughts, I took it upon myself to plan the framework of this book. In it, eminent statisticians (probabilists are included under this title) would be invited to sketch their lives, explain how they had become interested in probability and· statistics, give an account of their major contributions, and possibly hazard some predictions about the future of the subject.

Chapter 1 - Arthur Lyon Bowley and R. C. Bose Chapter 2 - Harry Campion and Alexander Alexandrovich Chuprov Chapter 3 - Colin Clark and George Dantzig Chapter 4 - W. Edwards Deming and Karen Dunnell Chapter 5 - Ronald Fisher and Stefano Franscini Chapter 6 - Milton Friedman and Michel Gauquelin Chapter 7 - Charles Roy Henderson and Joseph Hilbe Chapter 8 - Maurice Kendall and Karl Pearson Chapter 9 - Nate Silver

Chapter 1 - John Graunt and Thomas Bayes Chapter 2 - Pierre-Simon Laplace Chapter 3 - William Playfair and Carl Friedrich Gauss Chapter 4 - Adolphe Quetelet and Florence Nightingale Chapter 5 - Francis Galton and Thorvald N. Thiele Chapter 6 - Charles Sanders Peirce and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth Chapter 7 - John Tukey and Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao

Chapter 1 - Arthur Lyon Bowley and R. C. Bose Chapter 2 - Harry Campion and Alexander Alexandrovich Chuprov Chapter 3 - Colin Clark and George Dantzig Chapter 4 - W. Edwards Deming and Karen Dunnell Chapter 5 - Ronald Fisher and Stefano Franscini Chapter 6 - Milton Friedman and Michel Gauquelin Chapter 7 - Charles Roy Henderson and Joseph Hilbe Chapter 8 - Leonhard Euler Chapter 9 - Augustin–Louis Cauchy Chapter 10 - John Von Neumann Chapter 11 - David Hilbert Chapter 12 - Stefan Banach

Erstmals wird hier Leben und Werk Aleksandr A. Chuprovs (1874-1926) beschrieben, des zu seiner Zeit bedeutendsten russischen und kontinentalen Statistikers. Das Buch basiert auf Archivquellen aus Moskau und enthält viele Passagen aus Chuprovs Korrespondenz mit Anderson, Bortkiewicz, Markov und Slutsky.Vor allem strebte Chuprov danach, die damals existierenden Strömungen statistischen Denkens (Englische Schule und Kontinentale Richtung) zu vereinen. Er war überaus erfolgreich und hat sich um das Hervortreten der mathematischen Statistik große Verdienste erworben.

It has been my good fortune to meet and get to know many remarkable people, mostly statisticians and mathematicians, and to derive much pleasure and benefit from these contacts. They were teachers, colleagues and students, and the following pages sketch their careers and our interactions. Also included are a few persons with whom I had little or no direct contact but whose ideas had a decisive influence on my work. To provide some coherence, the account is largely chronological and follows the steps of my own career. Taken together, these sketches provide a very personal picture of the dev- opment of statistical theory from the 1930s to the 1970s. It is the period between two revolutions: that of Fisher, Neyman, and Pearson, which laid the foundations for the classical statistical theory of that period; and the second revolution, forty years later, brought about by the advent of the computer, which turned statistics in new directions. The present account of this history is a highly selective one, which emphasizes the persons, institutions, and statistical topics that were close to my interests. One narrowing effect of this perspective stems from the fact that my career took place in the United States. As a consequence, the book focuses on American statisticians and institutions. Only the last two ch- ters discuss, briefly and very incompletely, developments in some other countries.

A fascinating chronicle of the lives and achievements of the menand women who helped shapethe science of statistics This handsomely illustrated volume will make enthralling readingfor scientists, mathematicians, and science history buffs alike.Spanning nearly four centuries, it chronicles the lives andachievements of more than 110 of the most prominent names intheoretical and applied statistics and probability. From Bernoullito Markov, Poisson to Wiener, you will find intimate profiles ofwomen and men whose work led to significant advances in the areasof statistical inference and theory, probability theory, governmentand economic statistics, medical and agricultural statistics, andscience and engineering. To help readers arrive at a fullerappreciation of the contributions these pioneers made, the authorsvividly re-create the times in which they lived while exploring themajor intellectual currents that shaped their thinking andpropelled their discoveries. Lavishly illustrated with more than 40 authentic photographs andwoodcuts • Includes a comprehensive timetable of statistics from theseventeenth century to the present • Features edited chapters written by 75 experts from around theglobe • Designed for easy reference, features a unique numbering schemethat matches the subject profiled with his or her particular fieldof interest