Egon Sharpe Pearson, 11 August 1895 - 12 June 1980

Abstract

Egon Sharpe Pearson was born on 11 August 1895. Family background is often an important conditioning influence on any subsequent career, and this was obviously so in his case; it is thus very relevant to recall something of his parents’ life and circumstances. His father Karl was born in London on 27 March 1857, of Yorkshire descent, Karl’s father William Pearson being a barrister and Q .C. Karl (in spite of evidence of delicate health during his schooldays) proved to have, like his father before him, an exceptional capacity for hard work, which resulted in his being Third Wrangler at Cambridge in 1879, being called to the Bar in 1881, and spending a good deal of time in the intervening period in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he studied anything and everything. Such activity was not without purpose, and could be identified with Karl Pearson’s passion for what he termed the ethic of free thought, in which scientific enquiry was but one facet.