The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Engel, Ernst

ENGEL, Ernst, German statistician: b. Dresden, 1821; d. Berlin, 1896. After a preliminary education he took up the study of mining engineering at Freiberg and Paris. For a time he was a member of the commission investigating industrial and labor conditions in Saxony, and in 1850 was appointed chief of the Royal Bureau of Statistics at Dresden. He resigned in 1858 and was made chief of the Saxon Mortgage Insurance Company, but two years later became director of the Prussian Bureau of Statistics, from which he retired in 1882. He was one of the most efficient of modern statisticians and his investigations into the social condition of the working classes have proved invaluable. He wrote ‘Die Methoden der Volkszählung’ (1861); ‘Land und Leute des Preussischen Staates’ (1863); ‘Das Zeitalter des Dampfes’ (1881).