Raymond PearlDied 17 Nov 1940 at age 61 (born 3 Jun 1879).American zoologist, one of the founders of biometry, the application of statistics to biology and medicine. Pearl was chief statistician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1919-35). He pioneered studies in longevity, changes in world population, and genetics. He reported in the May 1938 Scientific American that "the smoking of tobacco was associated definitely with an impairment of life duration and the amount or degree of this impairment increased as the habitual amount of smoking increased." In 1926, he first reported health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption (as opposed to both abstinence and heavy drinking) in a modern medical light. |
