Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. We are a weekly guide to

the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Halford.

This week we're looking at a historical figure you may not have heard about, but definitely

should have.

Edith Abbott is best known for her role as a pioneer in the field of social work in

the United States. A suffragist and the child of abolitionists, she became an advocate

for social reform, then published several books on topics from women in the workforce to

the criminal justice system. But one thing you won't find in her Wikipedia entry or many

other places for that matter is her contribution to the world of statistics.

She did so many things that I think her work as a statistician just slipped through

the cracks eventually.

That's Sharon Law, a merit professor of statistics at Arizona State University. She wrote a book

measuring crime behind the statistics which features a whole section on Edith Abbott.

Edith Abbott's story is remarkable and starts from an early age. After her family lost

most of its money during the financial crises of 1893, Edith used her mathematical skills

to help support her family.

At age 16, after her family had lost a lot of their financial resources in the financial

crises of that year, she started teaching high school in Grand Island and she was teaching

algebra and geometry and Latin and history and at the same time she was taking correspondence

classes at the University of Nebraska.

Edith eventually attended the University of Nebraska, then earned a PhD in economics

from the University of Chicago. She then moved into Hull House in Chicago in 1908.

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