Adolphe Quetelet was born on February 22, 1796 in the city of Ghent in Flanders, Belgium. He attended the University of Ghent, receiving the doctoral degree in 1819. Additionally, Quetelet studied probability in Paris under Joseph Fourier and Pierre Laplace.
Quetelet made important contributions to the development of applied statistics. He generalized the use of the normal distribution beyond the application to error analysis, and in particular, applied the normal distribution to human characteristics such as height and weight. Quetelet improved methods for the collection of data, and worked on the statistical analyses of data involving crime, mortality, geophysics, and astronomy. Quetelet organized the first statistics conference in 1853 and wrote Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, essai d'une physique sociale, (On the development of human faculties, essay of a social physics) published in 1853. Quetelet was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1839.
Adolphe Quetelet died on February 17, 1874 in Brussels, Belgium.