Arthur Black (mathematician) explained

Arthur Black (1851–1893) was an English mathematician. He killed himself and his wife and son. His daughter survived.

Life

He was the eldest son of David Black of Brighton, a solicitor and coroner, and brother to Clementina Black, the social reformer and author Constance Garnett and Grace Human.^[1] He became a student of William Clifford at University College London.^[2] He was in a business partnership with the lawyer Robert Singleton Garnett, elder brother to Edward Garnett.^{[3] [4]} In 1893 he killed his wife, son and himself.^[5] His daughter Gertrude Speedwell Black (1887–1963) survived, and married H. J. Massingham.^{[6] [7]}

Black's work remained unpublished at the time of his suicide. Micaiah John Muller Hill saw to the publication of a paper on a general Gaussian integral.^[8] Notebooks survive, including attempts to formulate a quantitative theory of evolution; they also contain a derivation of the chi-squared distribution.^{[2] [9]} A long manuscript, Algebra of Animal Evolution, was sent to Karl Pearson, who then transmitted it to Francis Galton; it is now lost.^[9] Pearson and Walter Frank Raphael Weldon thought highly of the work, but Galton had reservations.^[10]

References

• Donald A. MacKenzie, Studies in the History of Probability and Statistics. XXXVI Arthur Black: A Forgotten Pioneer of Mathematical Statistics, Biometrika Vol. 64, No. 3 (Dec., 1977), pp. 613–616. Published by: Biometrika Trust. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2345340

Notes and References

1. MacKenzie, p. 613.
2. Web site: aim25.ac.uk, Black (Arthur) Notebooks. . 30 December 2006 . 11 May 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080511045930/http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=1588&inst_id=13 . dead .
3. Book: Roger W. Peattie. Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti. 1 April 2013. 1 November 2010. Penn State Press. 978-0-271-04424-8. 655 note 1.
4. Book: Joseph Conrad. The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad. 1 April 2013. 20 December 2007. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-88189-0. xxxvii.
5. Book: David Trotter. Paranoid modernism. registration. 1 April 2013. 2001. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-818755-4. 5.
6. Book: D. H. Lawrence. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence. 1 April 2013. 28 November 2002. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-00700-9. 121.
7. 34922. Massingham, (Harold) John. Malcolm. Chase.
8. MacKenzie, p. 614.
9. Book: Michael Cowles. Statistics in Psychology: An Historical Perspective. 1 April 2013. 2001. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Incorporated. 978-0-8058-3509-0. 105 note 1.
10. Book: Theodore M. Poeter. The Rise of Statistical Thinking: 1820-1900. 1 April 2013. 1986. Princeton University Press. 978-0-691-02409-7. 299–300.