1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Block, Maurice

BLOCK, MAURICE (1816–1901), French statistician, was born in Berlin of Jewish parents on the 18th of February 1816. He studied at Bonn and Giessen, but settled in Paris, becoming naturalized there. In 1844 he entered the French ministry of agriculture, becoming in 1852 one of the heads of the statistical department. He retired in 1862, and thenceforth devoted himself entirely to statistical studies, which have gained for him a wide reputation. He was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1880. He died in Paris on the 9th of January 1901. His principal works are: Dictionnaire de l’administration française (1856); Statistique de la France (1860); Dictionnaire général de la politique (1862); L’Europe politique et sociale (1869); Traité théorique et pratique de statistique (1878); Les Progrés de l’économie politique depuis Adam Smith (1890); he also edited from 1856 L’Annuaire de l’économie politique et de la statistique, and wrote in German Die Bevolkerung des französischen Kaiserreichs (1861); Die Bevolkerung Spaniens und Portugals (1861); and Die Machtstellung der europäischen Staaten (1862).