Abstract

In this paper we are describing our partnership in research on history of statistics with Alain Desrosières who pass away in 2013. Then we are tracing his intellectualitinerary : training at Ecole Polytechnique and National School of Statistics, meeting with Pierre Bourdieu, first studies on History in Statistics in 1976 and on ocupational and social categrization with Thevenot in the 1980’s, and publication of his major book of 1993 – la politique des grands nombres, with the new resource he found besaide sciences studies school and Bielefeld works on the probabilistic Revolution. We are then debating of some problems he assessed like the gap between statistics as tool of proof and as mean of government, between realist or constructivist approaches of statistics, or again the differences between measurement in natural and social sciences, with the prominent part of conventions. After 2000 he launched an ambitious program of Sociology of quantification which concerned not only statistics but also comptability.