Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was one of the individuals most responsible in the ninteenth century for the quantification of in the physical and social sciences. He was born in Ghent on February 22, 1796, and was educated at the Lycee of Ghent. At age 19 he was appointed an instructor in mathematics at the Royal College in Ghent. In 1819 he was the first person to receive a doctorate from the University of Ghent for a dissertation on conic, and in the same year he moved to Brussels to take the chair of mathematics at the Athenaeum. Quetelet was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy in 1820. He married a Mlle. Curtet and they had two children.

In the early stages of his career, however, there was nothing to suggest that Quetelet's fame would spread throughout Europe. In 1824, he spent three months in Paris and learned two things: probability and how to run...