Added to your basket:
Die neuern Ansichten über Moralstatistik …

Checkout now

First edition of a lecture given on 29 April 1871 at the University of Leipzig, presentation copy, the title-page inscribed ‘Herrn Dr Adolf Mayer, freundschaftlich G.F. Knapp’.

Knapp (1842–1926) studied in Munich, Berlin and Göttingen, and in 1867 became head of the statistical office of the municipality of Leipzig, in 1869 extraordinary professor of economics in Leipzig and in 1874 professor in Strasbourg. He was one of the leading German Kathedersozialisten (socialist professors), and co-founder of the Verein für Sozialpolitik.

At the beginning of his career he carried out some important work in statistics: he was the first to develop a systematic theory of mortality measurement in his Über die Ermittlung der Sterblichkeit … (1868). ‘Opposing the viewpoints of Quételet and his followers, who claimed that man’s behaviour is governed by statistical “laws,” he viewed statistics simply as a tool in the realistic study of the manifold social phenomena and fully realized the limitations of statistical observations’ (ESS).

For a fuller discussion of Knapp’s contribution to statistics, see Westergaard, Contributions to the history of statistics, p. 221ff.

You may also be interested in...

WHITWORTH, William Allen.

Choice and chance.

First edition, scarce especially in good condition, of a key work in the history of probability and statistics. Whitworth’s best-known book, an accessible presentation of problems of probability and associated areas, was derived from a series of lectures delivered before the women of Queen’s College, Liverpool, in 1866, the year of the first appearance of Todhunter’s History. Whitworth was both an able priest and mathematician, serving in Liverpool and London, and at his death was the vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street, in Marylebone.

Read more

NEWTONIAN SCHOOLBOOK MARTIN, Benjamin.

The Young Student’s Memorial Book, or pocket Library.

First and only edition. A self-taught schoolmaster in Chichester, Benjamin Martin (1705-1782) ‘began to write, with the avowed intention of bringing down the price of books, especially for the benefit of those who were trying to educate themselves as he had done’ (Oxford DNB). ‘One of the great popularizers of science in the mid-eighteenth century’ (DSB), Martin is probably best known as an early champion of Newton, and Sections 25-6 here are on ‘Sir Isaac Newton’s Universal Theorem’, and Fluxions.

Read more