QUETELET, Lambert Adolphe Jacques (1796-1874), astronomer, meteorologist, and statistician, was born at Ghent, February 22, 1796, and educated at the lyceum of that town. In 1819 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the athenaeum of Brussels; in 1828 he became lecturer at the newly created museum of science and literature, and he continued to hold that post until the museum was absorbed in the free university in 1834. In 1828 he was appointed director of the new royal observatory which it had been decided to found, chiefly at his instigation. The building was finished in 1832, and the instruments were ready for work in 1835, from which date the observations were published in 4to volumes {Annales de l ’ Observatoire Royal de Bruxelles), but Quetelet chiefly devoted himself to meteorology and statistics. From 1834 he was perpetual secretary of the Brussels Academy, and published a vast number of articles in its Bulletin, as also in his journal Correspondance Mathématique et Physique (11 vols., 1825-39). He died on February 17, 1874. Quetelet’s astronomical papers refer chiefly to shooting stars and similar phenomena. He organized extensive magnetical and meteorological observations, and in 1839 he started regular observations of the periodical phenomena of vegetation, especially the flowering of plants. The results are given in various memoirs published by the Brussels Academy and in his works Sur le Climat de la Belgique and Sur la Physique du Globe (the latter forms vol. xiii. of the Annales, 1861). He is, however, chiefly known by the statistical investigations which occupied him from 1823 onward. In 1835 he published his principal work, Sur Γ Homme et le Développement de ses Facultés, ou Essai de Physique Sociale (2d ed. 1869), containing a résumé of ...