Abstract
THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY had its birth at a meeting held in London on March 15, 1834, under the chairmanship of the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the centenary will be celebrated on April 17, when the Prince of Wales, an honorary president of the Society, will preside at a meeting to be held at University College, London. The Society arose out of the Cambridge meeting in 1833 of the British Association. During the meeting, which was attended by the famous Belgian mathematician, Que´telet,a small gathering of members interested in statistics was held in Trinity College. Through this, Babbage was led to suggest the formation of a statistical section of the Association. His suggestion was approved and a committee appointed. It was, however, soon recognised that for the collection of materials a more permanent society would be required, and this led to the meeting of March 15, 1834; when it was resolved to establish a Statistical Society of London (see NATUBE, March 10, p. 389). The Society was incorporated in 1887, and is now in a flourishing condition. One of the original recommendations was that it should “of course be one prominent object of the Society to form a complete Statistical Library as rapidly as its funds may admit”. The Society has now a library of more than sixty thousand volumes.
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Centenary of the Royal Statistical Society. Nature 133, 560 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133560c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133560c0