Adolphe Quetelet and the Astronomical origin of the Body Mass Index
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35830/mcya.vi22.431Keywords:
Average man, Gaussian curve, overweight, obesityAbstract
One of the most important problems for Public Health is currently represented by overweight and obesity. Their presence produces or aggravates multiple conditions and the figures indicate that it is one of the pandemics of the 21st century. To determine excess weight, it is common to use the Body Mass Index (BMI); which is a simple indicator of the relationship between weight and height in kg/m2, it is also known as the Quetelet Index since it was described by this Belgian mathematician and astronomer in the 19th century. Quetelet was considered a precursor of biostatistics by generating the concept of the average man (l'homme moyen), an application of the Normal Curve of the astronomer Gauss, which until then had only been used for astronomical observations.
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