Jacques Bertillon

Jacques Bertillon (born November 11, 1851, Paris, France—died July 7, 1922, Valmondois) was a French statistician and demographer whose application of quantitative methods to the analysis of a variety of social questions gave impetus to the increased use of statistics in the social sciences.

Educated as a physician, Bertillon in the 1870s turned to the analysis of statistics, publishing articles on comparative divorce and suicide rates among nations. In 1883 he succeeded his father, Louis-Adolphe Bertillon, as head of the Paris bureau of vital statistics. Over the next 30 years the bureau, under his direction, increased the kinds of data gathered and developed more elaborate kinds of analysis.

Bertillon worked to establish uniform international statistical standards and saw his “Bertillon classification” of causes of deaths come into use in many nations. To facilitate the collection of data in French government offices, he wrote an elementary course in administrative statistics (1895). Increased alcoholism in France and a decline in French population growth relative to the rates in other countries were problems that particularly interested Bertillon. These questions gave rise to several works, including L’Alcoolisme et les moyens de le combattre jugés par l’expérience (1904; “Alcoholism and Ways of Combating It Judged from Experience”) and La Dépopulation de la France (1911; “The Depopulation of France”).