Parent Category: Body Mass Index

Body mass index (BMI), or Quetelet index, is a statistical measure of the weight of a person scaled according to height. As such, it is useful as a population measure only, and is not appropriate for diagnosing individuals. It was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet during the course of developing "social physics"

Body mass index is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of their height. The formulas universally used in medicine produce a unit of measure of kg/m².