Where Did BMI Originate From?

If you want to blame someone for your body-mass index, blame Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. Just know that you wouldn't have wanted to argue with him: The Belgian-born mathematician was known as one of the most brilliant scholars of the 19th century.

Quetelet

• Average Man Theory

  Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) was a Belgian scientist, mathematician and writer whose most enduring contribution was the creation of the body mass index. The body mass index is a person's weight in kilograms, divided by the person's height squared and in meters. A healthy body mass index is thought be be anything below 25.

Statistics as Sociology

• The Handbook of Nutrition and Food reported that Quetelet developed the body mass index in an 1835 paper. Quetelet was one of the first mathematicians to discover the advantages of quantifying biological data for research purposes. Although he is best known as the father of modern statistics, Quetelet's research focused on the sociological applications of statistics, which was considered unusual at the time.

Criticism

• Nearly half of the NBA is overweight, based on BMI

  Although it's still widely used as a barometer of health, the body mass index has been criticized because it doesn't take into account how much of a person's weight is muscle and how much is fat. Under the body mass index, for example, a high percentage of professional athletes--including nearly half of the NBA--are classified as overweight or obese.