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Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de buffon

b. 7 September 1707 d. 16 April 1788

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Statisticians of the Centuries
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Abstract

Author of the monumental Histoire Naturelle, Buffon also introduced several original ideas in probability and statistics, notably the premier example in “geometric probability” and a body of experimental and theoretical work in demography.

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Bibliography

  • Badey, L. (1929). Buffon, précurseur de la science démographique. Annales de geographies May, 206–220.

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  • Dupaquier, J. and M. (1985). Histoire de la demographic Perrin, Paris.

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  • Gayon, J. (1992). Buffon 88, Actes du colloque international Paris-Montbard-Dijon, 14–22 June 1988, under the direction of J. Gayon, Vrin, Paris,. [Contains a detailed bibliography of Buffon’s works and his published opus from 1954 to 1991.]

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  • Hanks, L. (1966). Buffon avant l’“Histoire naturelle”. P.U.R, Paris.

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  • Pearson, K. (1978). The History of Statistics in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Griffin, London.

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  • Piveteau, J. (1954). Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon. edited by J. Piveteau, Corpus général des philosophes francais, Volume XLI, Paris, PUR. [Contains in particular the paper “De la manière d’étudier et de traiter l’histoire naturelle” and “Essai d’arithmétique morale. ” Apart from an introduction to the philosophical work of Buffon by J. Piveteau and a study of his mathematical philosophy by M. Fréchet, this work contains a very detailed bibliography of works on Buffon and his opus up to 1954].

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  • Weil. F. (1961). La correspondance Buffon-Cramer, Revue d’histoire des sciences, Volume XIV, pp. 97–136. [Annotates the text of all known letters between these two scholars from 1727 until Cramer’s death in 1752.]

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Ducel, Y., Martin, T. (2001). Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de buffon. In: Heyde, C.C., Seneta, E., Crépel, P., Fienberg, S.E., Gani, J. (eds) Statisticians of the Centuries. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-95283-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0179-0

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