Les débuts de la statistique mathématique en Espagne (1914-1936)

There is a consensus amongst the historians of statistics about the importance of the twenties as starting “a new era” in the theoretical statistics. The article tries to give account of this period and to show the characteristics of this new form of statistics. For Spain, this period was very exciting in may respects. As in the rest of the countries, Mathematical Statistics is developed here in two directions: mathematical physics and econometrics. We can find all the problems related to the institutionalisation of the discipline and the change of paradigm associated to the British mathematicians F.Y. Edgeworth and A. Bowley. The hypothesis is that the new statistics has its central point in the theory of sampling. In spite of the technical and methodological problems that its application still entails, the social and political conditions allow for a new science called Mathematical Statistics to arise.