Arbuthnot

John Arbuthnot

Born: April 1667 in Inverbervie, Kincardine, Scotland
Died: 27 Feb 1735 in London, England

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Arbuthnot published the first work on probability in English.

Arbuthnot's main fame is on his reputation as a wit and on his satirical writings. With Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Thomas Parnell he founded the Scriblerus Club in 1714, whose purpose was to satirise bad poetry and pedantry. The club was short-lived.

As a mathematician he translated Huygens' tract on probability in 1692 and extended it by adding to a few further games of chance. This was the first work on probability published in English.

His note published by the Royal Society in 1710 is perhaps the first application of probability to social statistics. In this paper he claims to demonstrate that divine providence, not chance, governs the sex ratio at birth.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. L M Beattie, John Arbuthnot (Cambridge, Mass., 1935).
  4. G A Aitken, The life and works of John Arbuthnot (Oxford, 1892). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996