Wilhelm Lexis
| Wilhelm Lexis | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Wilhelm Hector Richard Albrecht Lexis 17 July 1837 Eschweiler |
| Died | 24 August 1914 (aged 77) Göttingen |
| Residence | Germany |
| Citizenship | German |
| Fields | Social scientist |
| Doctoral advisor | August Beer |
| Doctoral students | Ladislaus Bortkiewicz |
Wilhelm Lexis (17 July 1837, Eschweiler, Germany – 24 August 1914, Göttingen, Germany), full name Wilhelm Hector Richard Albrecht Lexis, was a German statistician, economist, and social scientist. The Oxford Dictionary of Statistics cites him as a "pioneer of the analysis of demographic time series". Lexis is largely remembered for two items that bear his name—the Lexis ratio and the Lexis diagram.
Lexis graduated in 1859 from the University of Bonn, where he studied science and mathematics. He spent some time afterwards in various occupations and, in 1861, went to Paris to study social science. It was there that Lexis became acquainted with the work of Adolphe Quetelet, whose quantitative approach to the social sciences was to guide much of Lexis' work. He spent about ten years in Paris, after which he took a teaching position in Strasbourg (France). At some point during this period, Lexis wrote his first book (Introduction to the Theory of Population Statistics) and had it published in 1875, by which time he was teaching in the Estonian city of Tartu (then called Dorpat).
Starting in 1876, Lexis was the chair of the Economics Department at the University of Freiburg. The various papers written by him during his eight-year tenure at Freiburg were, in the eyes of statistics historian Stephen Stigler, "his most important statistical work". Foremost among them was the 1879 paper "On the Theory of the Stability of Statistical Series", which introduced the quantity now often called the Lexis ratio.
Lexis moved on from Freiburg to the University of Breslau but stayed there only a few years (from 1884 to 1887). He then settled in Göttingen, taking a position at that city's University. In 1895, he established a course in actuarial science at the university, the first ever in Germany. In 1901, Lexis became a member of the Insurance Advisory Council for Germany's Federal Insurance Supervisory Office. He remained a member of the Council until his death in 1914. During this final period of his life, Lexis published two more books: Treatises on Population and Social Statistics (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1903) and General Economics (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910). He was also the editor of a book on the German education system.
Throughout his professional career, Lexis published books and articles on a wide variety of topics, including demography, economics and mathematical statistics. However, little of that work proved to have lasting significance. Today, Lexis is largely remembered for two items that bear his name—the Lexis ratio and the Lexis diagram. His theory of mortality has also enjoyed a recent revival of interest.
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