In what way did Étienne Halphen interests lead to him discovering the harmonic distribution?

In probability theory and statistics, the harmonic distribution is a continuous probability distribution. It was discovered by Étienne Halphen, who had become interested in the statistical modeling of natural events. His practical experience in data analysis motivated him to pioneer a new system of distributions that provided sufficient flexibility to fit a large variety of data sets. Halphen restricted his search to distributions whose parameters could be estimated using simple statistical approaches.

He had become interested in the statistical modeling of natural events.  This motivated him to find a system that provided sufficient flexibility to fit a large variety of data sets.