Economist & Statistician

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

A self-taught mathematician from a famously eccentric Irish literary family who wrote some of the densest prose in the history of economics, edited a major journal for thirty-five years, and quietly lent his initial to the name of Biometrika

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth taught himself mathematics after a university education spent entirely on languages, then produced foundational early work on estimating correlation coefficients and comparing sample means, alongside the indifference curve and contract curve that remain fixtures of economics. This bio covers his eccentric Anglo-Irish literary family, his thirty-five years as founding editor of The Economic Journal, his complicated influence on Karl Pearson, and the quiet acknowledgment -- the letter k in 'Biometrika' -- that Pearson admitted he owed to Edgeworth.

This bio requires a free account.