Editing Ladislaus Bortkiewicz (section)

==Life and work==
Ladislaus Bortkiewicz was born in [[Saint Petersburg]], [[Imperial Russia]], to two ethnic Polish parents: Józef Bortkiewicz and Helena Bortkiewicz (née Rokicka). His father was a [[szlachta|Polish nobleman]] who served in the [[Imperial Russian Army|Russian Imperial Army]].

Bortkiewicz graduated from the Law Faculty in 1890. In 1898 he published a book about the [[Poisson distribution]], titled ''The Law of Small Numbers''.<ref>Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, ''Das Gesetz der kleinen Zahlen'' [The law of small numbers] (Leipzig, Germany: B.G. Teubner, 1898).  On [https://archive.org/stream/dasgesetzderklei00bortrich#page/n18/mode/1up page 1], Bortkiewicz presents the Poisson distribution.  On [https://archive.org/stream/dasgesetzderklei00bortrich#page/n61/mode/2up pages 23–25], Bortkiewicz presents his famous analysis of "4.  Beispiel:  Die durch Schlag eines Pferdes im preussischen Heere Getöteten." (4. Example: Those killed in the Prussian army by a horse's kick.).  On pages 17–20 Bortkiewicz presents his analysis of "1. Beispiel:  Die Selbstmorde von Kindern in Preussen." (1. Example:  Suicides of children in Prussia.).  Bortkiewicz's book is reviewed in:  L. v. Bortkewitsch (1898) "Das Gesetz der kleinen Zahlen," ''Monatshefte für Mathematik'', vol. 9, [https://books.google.com/books?id=3sUKAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA39 pages 39–41].</ref> In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian horse-kicking data famous. The data gave the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers followed a Poisson distribution. The book also examined data on child-suicides. Some<ref>p.e. I J Good, Some statistical applications of Poisson's work, Statist. Sci. 1 (2) (1986), 157&ndash;180.
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2245435 JSTOR link]</ref> have suggested that the Poisson distribution should have been named the "Bortkiewicz distribution."
[[File:Bortkiewicz - Opere, 1971 - 5795778.tif|thumb|Bortkiewicz' 1971 book ''The economic theory of Marx'']]
In political economy, Bortkiewicz is important for his analysis of [[Karl Marx]]'s reproduction schema in the last two volumes of ''[[Das Kapital|Capital]]''. Bortkiewicz identified a [[transformation problem]] in Marx's work. Making use of [[Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev|Dmitriev's]] analysis of [[David Ricardo|Ricardo]], Bortkiewicz proved that the data used by Marx was sufficient to calculate the general profit rate and relative prices. Though Marx's transformation procedure was not correct—because it did not calculate prices and profit rate simultaneously, but sequentially—Bortkiewicz has shown that it is possible to get the correct results using the Marxian framework, i.e. using the Marxian variables constant capital and variable capital it is possible to obtain the profit rate and the relative prices in a three-sector model. This "correction of the Marxian system" has been the great contribution of Bortkiewicz to classical and Marxian economics but it was completely unnoticed until [[Paul Sweezy]]'s 1942 book "Theory of Capitalist Development". [[Piero Sraffa]] (1960) has provided the complete generalization of the simultaneous method for classical and Marxian analysis.{{cn|date=May 2024}}{{clarify|date=April 2025}}

Bortkiewicz died in [[Berlin]], [[Weimar Republic|Germany]]. His papers, including a voluminous correspondence file (some 1,000 letters 1876–1931), were deposited at [[Uppsala University]] in Sweden,<ref>L.v.Bortkiewicz Archiv, Manuskript & Musik Abteilung, Universitätsbibliothek Uppsala,</ref> except for his correspondence with [[Léon Walras]] which went into the collection of the Walras scholar [[William Jaffé]] in the USA.