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The anniversaries of several important events in the development of mathematical probability theory coincided in 2012-2013. In 1662 John Graunt published his Natural and Political Observations that marked the beginning of demographic and medical statistics. The year 1712 saw the publication of important works by John Arbuthnot and Abraham de Moivre, followed one year later by Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi. Theorie analytique des probabilites by Pierre-Simon Laplace appeared in 1812. The article described these works as landmarks in the development of the discipline. Full text as PDF

In 1876, the French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) recorded the electrical activity in the isolated heart of a frog and of a turtle. The article analyzes this accomplishment, its importance for the development of electrocardiography, and the instrument – Lippmann's capillary electrometer – that was used in the experiment. It provides a short biography of Marey, a description of his research interests, and an evaluation of his contribution to the development of electrophysiology. Full text as PDF