Karl Pearson /

Karl Pearson FRS (27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. He was a proponent of eugenics, and a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton. A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Carl Pearson, later known as Karl Pearson (1857–1936) was born to William Pearson and Fanny Smith, who had three children, Aurthur, Carl (Karl) and Amy. William Pearson also sired an illegitimate son, Frederick Mockett. Pearson's mother, Fanny Pearson née Smith, came from a family of master mariners who sailed their own ships from Hull; his father read law at Edinburgh and was a successful barrister and Queen's Counsel (QC). William Pearson's father's family came from the North Riding of Yorkshire. "Carl Pearson" inadvertently became "Karl Pearson" when he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg in 1879, which changed the spelling. He used both variants of his name until 1884 when he finally adopted Karl — supposedly