Harald Ludvig Westergaard
Encyclopedia
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
- December 13, 1936, Copenhagen) was a Danish statistician
Statistician
A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. The core of that work is to measure, interpret, and describe the world and human activity patterns within it...
and economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
known for his work in demography
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
and the history of statistics.
Harald Westergaard was born in Copenhagen and apart from a period studying in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1877-78 he lived there all his life. His subject at the University of Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
was mathematics but he became interested in economics and, while he was in England, he seems to have met William Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons was a British economist and logician.Irving Fisher described his book The Theory of Political Economy as beginning the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics as a science concerned with quantities is necessarily mathematical...
. In the preface to the second edition (1879) of the Theory of Political Economy Jevons refers to Westergaard's mathematical suggestions. However, after this spectacular debut Westergaard seems not to have contributed further to mathematical economics.
In 1880-2, Westergaard worked for the Danish Insurance Office and he developed an interest in demography. His international reputation was made by the publication of Die Lehre von der Mortalität und Morbilität (1881). This work won him a gold medal from the University and led to his appointment as a Lecturer in 1883. In 1886, he became a Professor at the early age of 33. He retired in 1924.
Westergaard's late work Contributions to the History of Statistics (1932) described the history of vital and economic statistics up to the end of the nineteenth century. Statistical theory, whether of the Laplace or Pearson
Karl Pearson
Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the disciplineof mathematical statistics....
variety, is discussed but given a subordinate place. In the Introduction, Westergaard remarks, "For a long while ... the calculus of probabilities had less influence on statistics than might have been expected, the authors confining themselves to abstract theories which had little or nothing to do with reality."
Westergaard was well-known and respected internationally. The obituary in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society is a learned society for statistics and a professional body for statisticians in the UK.-History:It was founded in 1834 as the Statistical Society of London , though a perhaps unrelated London Statistical Society was in existence at least as early as 1824...
of London, begins, "By [his] death Europe has lost her senior statistician" and ends, "This is not the place to write at length about his personal charm, marked by simplicity, helpfulness and friendliness; but it was this as much as his intellectual eminence that gave him a unique place in the society of economists and statisticians."
Books by Harald Westergaard
- Die Lehre von der Mortalität und Morbilität: Anthropologisch-statistische Untersuchungen. 1881
- Grundzüge der Theorie der Statistik. 1890
- Economic Development in Denmark before and during the World War. 1922
- Contributions to the History of Statistics, 1932, reprinted 1969 New York: Kelley
External links
There is a photograph at- Harald Ludvig Westergaard on the Portraits of Statisticians page.
For his connection with Jevons, search for Westergaard in