He was the eldest son of David Black of Brighton, a solicitor and coroner, and brother to Clementina Black, the social reformer and author Constance Garnett and Grace Human.
Micaiah John Muller Hill saw to the publication of a paper on a general Gaussian integral.
[8] Notebooks survive, including attempts to formulate a quantitative theory of evolution; they also contain a derivation of the chi-squared distribution.
[2][9] A long manuscript, Algebra of Animal Evolution, was sent to Karl Pearson, who then transmitted it to Francis Galton; it is now lost.
[9] Pearson and Walter Frank Raphael Weldon thought highly of the work, but Galton had reservations.