Jacques Bertillon (11 November 1851 – 4 July 1922) was a French

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may w ...

and demographer. Born in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, Bertillon was the son of statistician Louis Bertillon and the older brother of

Alphonse Bertillon Alphonse Bertillon (; 22 April 1853 – 13 February 1914) was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry to law enforcement creating an identification system based on physical me ...

. He was educated as a

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

but turned to

statistical analysis Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...

. In 1880 he wrote ''La Statistique humaine en France''. In 1891-93 he chaired a committee that introduced the Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death, which was adopted by several countries; it was the precursor to today's International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) which continues to be published by the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...

. By comparing statistics from different European countries he discovered the correlation between suicide rates and divorces, claiming that both phenomena were associated with social disequilibrium, ideas influencing

Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...

in his work ''

Suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...

''. Bertillon married the physician

Caroline Schultze Caroline Schultze (born Karola Szulc, 20 May 1866) was a Polish physician who worked in France. Schultze was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland. Her father was a musician. She gained a baccalaureat in 1884 and became a medical student at the Un ...

; they had two daughters. He died in Paris on 4 July 1922. Anticipating his death, he prepared a letter to several newspaper editors which stated "When you receive this I will no longer exist," and respectfully requested an obituary for himself.

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* * 1851 births 1922 deaths French statisticians French demographers {{france-mathematician-stub