Adolphe Quetelet, Social Physics and the Average Men of Science, 1796-1874

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Adolphe Quetelet, Social Physics and the Average Men of Science, 1796-1874 is written by Kevin Padraic Donnelly and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0822981637 (ISBN 10) and 9780822981633 (ISBN 13).

Adolphe Quetelet was an influential astronomer and statistician whose controversial work inspired heated debate in European and American intellectual circles. In creating a science designed to explain the "average man," he helped contribute to the idea of normal, most enduringly in his creation of the Quetelet Index, which came to be known as the Body Mass Index. Kevin Donnelly presents the first scholarly biography of Quetelet, exploring his contribution to quantitative reasoning, his place in nineteenth-century intellectual history, and his profound influence on the modern idea of average.