Claremont History and Philosophy of Mathematics Seminar: Iris Clever (UChicago)

Speaker: Iris Clever, University of Chicago

Title: The Making of the Modern Statistical Identity: From Skull Science to Biometrics

Abstract: In this presentation, I uncover an overlooked genealogy of biometrics, tracing it back to early 20th-century race science and the rise of statistical thinking about human identity. Before biometrics became a technology of controlling human identity, it was a science aimed at understanding human diversity, specifically racial diversity. I examine the emergence of craniometry in the 19th century and how its methodologies paved the way for a novel approach to racial anthropology driven by mathematical statistics in the early 20th century. Finally, I explore the postwar development of computerized anthropology.

FMI (or zoom link): jlorenat [at] pitzer.edu