In Response/ Puzzle
Significance · 2020
In Simon Raper's wonderful article, "Turning points: Pearson and the parameter" (June 2019, pages 22-25), the author writes: "Christened Carl Pearson, he later changed his first name to Karl in a rush of enthusiasm for German socialism and the ideas of Karl Marx."The influence of Marx on Pearson's switch from a "C" to a "K" spelling of his first name is recounted in a number of books, and even features in Pearson's entry on the Japanese-language version of Wikipedia (bit.ly/3eydYod).But in the 2004 book Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age, author Theodore M. Porter argues that the story is not all that it seems.He writes: "A purely speculative suggestion by J. B. S. Haldane, in a centenary address on Pearson, introduced into the scholarship the idea that Pearson's switch in 1880