Biography and science stand in an awkward relation to each other. The former presupposes a conception of the scientist as an individual of subjective experience, precisely countering the modern understanding of science as a social enterprise in which knowledge was increasingly presented and certified by ‘objective’ methods and institutions. This tension between individual lives and the scientific enterprise is particularly evident in the history of early twentieth-century statistics. During this period generations of statisticians pushed the field further towards neutrality and technicality and sought to produce statistical results and methods that were allegedly more impersonal than the outcomes of any other scientific endeavor.
Given this context, this session will explore the validity and usefulness of biographical accounts in the historiography of statistics. Scholarship (excepting Porter 2006) has only tentatively begun to assess the more recent theoretical and methodological innovations in the study of scientific lives (Shortland and Yeo 1996; Szöllösi-Janze 2000; Daston and Sibum 2003; Richards 2006). The evolution of the statistical science has largely been written as an internalist history that presents gradual methodical improvement. Numerous biographical encyclopedia add to this hagiography. Moreover, given the governmental and ‘impersonal’ character of statistical results and statistical methods, historians often favored social and institutional histories focusing on the organization of national statistical offices or the status of statistical results as public knowledge.
Yet, the culture of statistics shapes and is shaped by the people who practice it. The ‘statistician’, as a scientific person and historical category, has a history that is worth being told. This proposal invites papers which investigate the interactions and intersections between biography, institutional science and modern statistical lives, c.1860-1960. Mixed-method studies combining the qualitative study of individuals in their socio-cultural contexts with scientometric analyses, prosopography, scholarly network research, discourse or “field” methodologies are also welcome.
In particular, participants are encouraged to discuss and critically reflect upon their respective biographical methodology.

Papers may include themes such as:
- The ‘birth’ of the modern statistical “persona” (Daston and Sibum 2003) across scientific cultures;

- outsiders, bricoleurs and nonconformists – unlikely career paths and disappointments among statisticians;

- “uneasy careers and intimate lives” (Abir-Am and Outram 1987) – women statisticians and male identities across national scientific cultures;

- Recounting facts: the interrelations between modern statistical and literary lives;

- biographies of contemporary statisticians – the use of oral histories for the craft of biography;

- the multiplication of statistical “personae” from the mid-20th century: pollsters, survey researchers, econometricians, economic forecasters and their socio-intellectual relations to statistics and statisticians;

- Statisticians and statistics in the ‘age of extremes’: (self-)mobilization, opportunism and resistance of statistical experts in Eastern and Western dictatorships;

- The beauty of mathematical formula: “intellectual passion” (Polanyi 1958) as a factor of statistical truth.

Please submit your abstract of 250 words to Jochen_Mayer@gmx.de by 15 February 2015.