European Association of Methodology

Department of methodology and evaluation research

Jena University

On Gauss the optician and Abbe the statistician

Ivailo Partchev

University of Jena

Germany

While Gauss' contributions to mathematics, statistics, astronomy, and many other fields of science are widely recognized, the name of Ernst Abbe is associated primarily with glass and optics. Yet Abbe took over from Gauss in statistics as well, and should be accredited with many seminal ideas, including the derivation of the chi-squared distribution (1863).