Ladislaus Josephovich Bortkiewicz ( Russian Владислав Иосифович Борткевич, German ''Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz'' or ''Ladislaus von Bortkewitsch'') (7 August 1868 – 15 July 1931) was a Russian

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

and

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

of Polish ancestry. He wrote a book showing how the

Poisson distribution In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution () is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time if these events occur with a known const ...

, a discrete

probability distribution In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is a Function (mathematics), function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of possible events for an Experiment (probability theory), experiment. It is a mathematical descri ...

, can be useful in applied statistics, and he made contributions to

mathematical economics Mathematical economics is the application of Mathematics, mathematical methods to represent theories and analyze problems in economics. Often, these Applied mathematics#Economics, applied methods are beyond simple geometry, and may include diff ...

. He lived most of his professional life in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, where he taught at Strassburg University (Privatdozent, 1895–1897) and Berlin University (1901–1931).

Life and work

Ladislaus Bortkiewicz was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Imperial Russia Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor/empress, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * ...

, to two ethnic Polish parents: Józef Bortkiewicz and Helena Bortkiewicz (née Rokicka). His father was a Polish nobleman who served in the

Russian Imperial Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

. Bortkiewicz graduated from the Law Faculty in 1890. In 1898 he published a book about the

, titled ''The Law of Small Numbers''. In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian horse-kicking data famous. The data gave the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers followed a Poisson distribution. The book also examined data on child-suicides. Some have suggested that the Poisson distribution should have been named the "Bortkiewicz distribution." In political economy, Bortkiewicz is important for his analysis of

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

's reproduction schema in the last two volumes of '' Capital''. Bortkiewicz identified a

transformation problem In 20th-century discussions of Karl Marx's economics, the transformation problem is the problem of finding a general rule by which to transform the "values" of commodities (based on their socially necessary labour content, according to his labo ...

in Marx's work. Making use of

Dmitriev Dmitriyev or Dmitriev () is a common Russians, Russian surname that is derived from the male given name Dmitry and literally means ''Dmitry's''. It may refer to: *Aleksandr Dmitriyev (conductor) (born 1935), Russian conductor *Alexey Dmitriev (born ...

's analysis of Ricardo, Bortkiewicz proved that the data used by Marx was sufficient to calculate the general profit rate and relative prices. Though Marx's transformation procedure was not correct—because it did not calculate prices and profit rate simultaneously, but sequentially—Bortkiewicz has shown that it is possible to get the correct results using the Marxian framework, i.e. using the Marxian variables constant capital and variable capital it is possible to obtain the profit rate and the relative prices in a three-sector model. This "correction of the Marxian system" has been the great contribution of Bortkiewicz to classical and Marxian economics but it was completely unnoticed until

Paul Sweezy Paul Marlor Sweezy (April 10, 1910 – February 27, 2004) was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine ''Monthly Review''. He is best remembered for his contributions to economic theory ...

's 1942 book "Theory of Capitalist Development".

Piero Sraffa Piero Sraffa Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian Political economy, political economist who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. His book ''Production of Co ...

(1960) has provided the complete generalization of the simultaneous method for classical and Marxian analysis. Bortkiewicz died in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. His papers, including a voluminous correspondence file (some 1,000 letters 1876–1931), were deposited at

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

in Sweden,L.v.Bortkiewicz Archiv, Manuskript & Musik Abteilung, Universitätsbibliothek Uppsala, except for his correspondence with

Léon Walras Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras (; 16 December 1834 – 5 January 1910) was a French mathematical economics, mathematical economist and Georgist. He formulated the Marginalism, marginal theory of value (independently of William Stanley Jevons and Carl ...

which went into the collection of the Walras scholar William Jaffé in the USA.

Major publications

*''Die mittlere Lebensdauer. Die Methoden ihrer Bestimmung und ihr Verhältnis zur Sterblichkeitsmessung''. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1893
Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum
*"Review of Léon Walras, ''Éléments d'économie politique pure'', 2e édit.", 1890, ''Revue d'économie politique'' * * * — Article's English translation (
Value and Price in the Marxian System
'), 1952, International Economic Papers, No.2 * * &mdash
Spanish version 1917
* Original German version * *"Die Rodbertus'sche Grundrententheorie und die Marx'sche Lehre von der absoluten Grundrente", from: "Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung", 1910–11

Notes

References

Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard Unive ...

. Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, Economic Journal, Vol. 42 (1932), pp. 338–340, reprinted in: Ten great economists from Marx to Keynes (New York, 1960), pp. 302–305 *

Emil Julius Gumbel Emil Julius Gumbel (18 July 1891, in Munich – 10 September 1966, in New York City) was a German mathematician and political writer. Gumbel specialised in mathematical statistics and, along with Leonard Tippett and Ronald Fisher, was instrum ...

. Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2 (New York, 1968), pp. 128–131. Freely available online a
StatProb @ Internet Archive Wayback Machine
* Paul A. Samuelson. Resolving a Historical Confusion in Population Analysis. Human Biology, 48, 1976: pp. 559–580

External links

Biographical sketch
on the web site of the University of St. Andrews (in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

)
Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz
from encyclopedia.com

*
Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz — statistician, economist, and a European intellectual
', SFB 649 Discussion Paper 2014-015 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bortkiewicz, Ladislaus 1868 births 1931 deaths Economists from the Russian Empire Mathematicians from Saint Petersburg Statisticians from the Russian Empire People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent Marxian economists Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the German Empire