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Early Life
Pearl was born into an upper-middle class in Farmington, New Hampshire on June 3, 1879. At an early age, Pearl was exposed to the classics. His parents and grandparents wanted him to study Greek and Latin. However, when he attended Dartmouth College at 16 years old, he became fascinated by biology and graduated with a B.A. as the youngest in his class. At Dartmouth, he was known to be an exceptional student as well as a skilled musician. He was capable of playing almost every wind instrument, and he planned amateur music performances with his friends and colleagues. In 1899, Pearl attended the University of Michigan where he received his PhD in zoology for his work on the behavior of planarians. He also was involved in studying the variation of fish for the Biological Survey of the Great Lakes. While working in a zoological laboratory, he met his future wife, Maude M. De Witt. In 1903, they married, and together in 1905 and 1906, they traveled abroad and worked at the University of London, University of Leipzig, and Marine Biological Station in Naples.

Career
Pearl’s interest in statistical methods in biology began at the University of London, where he worked alongside Karl Pearson. He stayed as an instructor at the University of Michigan until 1906, and that same year, he went to the University of Pennsylvania to be an instructor in zoology. A year later, he became the head of the Department of Biology of the Main Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Maine in Orono where he studied the genetics of poultry and other domestic animals. From 1917 to 1919, Pearl was the Chief of the Statistical Division of the United States Food Administration. In 1918, Pearl developed a department of laboratory statistics when he was recruited by Johns Hopkins University to be the Professor of Biometry and Vital Statistics.

Wilson's Attack
In 1929, Pearl’s friend William Morton Wheeler was about to retire as the Dean of the Bussey Institution at Harvard University. At this time, there were plans to alter the current biological departments and create a field of human biology at Harvard. Due to his connections at Harvard, Pearl was mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed Wheeler and had many supporters there. However, Edwin Bidwell Wilson, a Harvard mathematician, was a critic of Pearl and did not believe he was fit for this position. Wilson believed that great detail and attention should be used when dealing with the math of biological data and thought that Pearl had been messy with his handling and reasoning of math in the field of biology. Wilson’s first issue with Pearl was his study of population growth in the 1920s. Pearl stated that he discovered the law of population that represented an S-shaped curve of growth, but Wilson thought that his data was insufficient and did not support this assertion.

Despite his criticism of Pearl, in 1925, Wilson reached out to Pearl for help on his cancer research. Pearl was unaware of Wilson’s criticism of him at the time. He did not help Wilson because he thought that he did not have a sufficient understanding of the biological and medical fields, which further ignited Wilson's distaste of Pearl. In 1929, Pearl conducted research on the correlation between tuberculosis and cancer and published a paper that claimed that there is a negative correlation. This research had mistakes in its data analysis, so Wilson saw this study as an opportunity to attack Pearl and prevent him from becoming the new dean. Wilson denounced Pearl’s use of mathematics in the cancer study to different departments at Harvard and published about it as well. His efforts paid off as the Board of Overseers at Harvard rejected Pearl’s nomination by a vote of ten to nine. Pearl continued his scientific pursuits at Hopkins until his death.

Scientific Interests
Pearl’s main focus of interest was in biostatistics. As one of the first biostatisticians to use mathematics as a way to interpret population genetics, Pearl published a book called Modes of Research in Genetics in 1915 and another book called Introduction to Medical Biometry and Statistics in 1923. They were both widely read and were influential in showing the importance of statistics in the genetic and medical fields.

Even though many of his books were well-received, some of his beliefs still caused controversy. One such belief was that when a brother and sister reproduce, there would not be an increase in homozygosity. Pearl believed that with brother-sister breeding and no selection past the F3 generation, heterozygosity would not fall below 50%.

Even though his main interest was biostatistics, Pearl had a wide range of interests in biology and was known for his broad knowledge of the subject. He published works on animal behavior, population growth, food and prices, Jewish and Christian marriages, and vegetarianism. In the 1920s and 1930s, Pearl focused on the effect that the environment, which included disease, alcohol, and tobacco, has on longevity. He published a book called Alcohol and Longevity in 1926, where he claimed that moderate consumption of alcohol could be beneficial for cardiovascular health, which was met with much debate due to prohibition. Controversy continued when Pearl conducted a study on tobacco in which he demonstrated that smoking decreases longevity while drinking does not.

Eugenics, Medicine, and Politics
Pearl was a eugenicist who held traditional Galtonian beliefs. He wanted to use eugenics and biometry in medicine and public health in order to gain knowledge of human heredity.

Pearl founded the Constitutional Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He believed in constitutional medicine, which focuses on examining the soil on which a seed falls. He later became the director of a new Institute of Biological Research at Johns Hopkins in 1925 that was aimed at examining the genetics and environmental factors of disease. This research institute combined biometry, genetics, and medicine to investigate the hereditary predisposition of tuberculosis and hypertension. When conducting his research of these diseases, Pearl recorded the height, weight, handedness, measurements of different body parts, and physical descriptions. Just like Galton, he believed that race was an important factor in human characteristics and believed in using biology and genetics to improve the long-term health of the population. Although he tried to be quantitative, objective, and systematic, his classifications of different races were influenced by social norms and prejudices.

However, in the late 1920s, Pearl condemned eugenics. Pearl criticized the use of race in eugenics despite conducting research that recognized racial differences. He believed that eugenics was doing the right thing badly and that human biology was eugenics done right if it consisted of reliable statistics, objectivity, a liberal social agenda, and medical affiliations.

Despite his denouncement of eugenics, Pearl continued to be involved in eugenic projects. From 1927-1932, Pearl and his colleague Alan Meyer were important figures of one of the first birth control clinics in the United States called Baltimore’s Bureau for Contraceptive Advice. Pearl was a supporter of birth control, but had a more conservative and scientific approach when compared to the ideologies of Margaret Sanger. The clinic performed a eugenic medicine study that looked at how the distribution of birth control information that was provided by a clinic affected society.