On waves of passion: London 1860

Abstract

L was the fountainhead of international statistics. Adolphe Quetelet enjoyed visiting the British capital. Early in his career he had discovered that many British thinkers shared his vision of statistics. He had a hand in the establishment of the Statistical Section (Section F) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Statistical Society of London. In 1851 he chose the Great Exhibition of London as the stage for launching the European statistical congress. He expected the British to be very supportive and the Crystal Palace seemed the ideal place to introduce the international plans being developed by statisticians. The immense exhibition building defied the imagination and exuded confidence in the future. No cast-iron structure had ever been built on this scale. Joseph Paxton, a former gardener, had designed a modern, covered Garden of Eden. It was surrounded by pavilions displaying the most amazing and ingenious inventions of the day and in the centre there were fountains, boscages and towering elms. Birds flew around overhead. It was as if you could touch the sky, which is precisely what statisticians wanted to do. Statisticians found an attentive listener in Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s German husband and the initiator of the Great Exhibition. As a former student of Adolphe Quetelet, he was well-versed in statistics. He became the patron and honorary chairman of the Statistical Society of London shortly after his marriage and relocation to Britain in 1840. There is no doubt that he was an active proponent of his former teacher’s plans in 1851 and, wherever possible, mobilised scientists to support the initiative. When the fourth international statistical congress was held in London in 1860, there was no one better suited to opening the proceedings than Prince Albert. Quetelet and the Prince corresponded regularly. In 1859, on behalf of the statistics community Quetelet invited the Prince to attend the forthcoming congress.1 The organisers had apparently intended to convene the congress in the summer of 1859, but the