Karl Pearson's Influence in the United States

Karl Pearson, the founder of mathematical statistics, was the leading statistical researcher from the 1890s up to about 1920. His interests were wide-ranging and so his impact on statistics in the United States was also wide-ranging. Many American researchers came to University College London to study with him. Others studied his work from afar. In the United States, Pearsonian statistics first penetrated the academic landscape in biology. This was soon followed by the fields of economics and psychology. It was not until relatively late in Pearson's career that several American mathematicians took up statistics as a serious research topic.