Francis Galton

Francis Galton (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911) was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909.

Early life and education

Galton was born in Birmingham, England, in 1822. He was the son of Samuel Tertius Galton, a banker, and Violetta Darwin, the daughter of the physician Erasmus Darwin, who was the grandfather of Charles Darwin. Galton's education began in Birmingham, but he later moved to London to study medicine at King's College.

Career

Galton's early career was as a traveler and explorer. He traveled extensively in Africa and the Middle East, and his experiences and observations during these travels influenced his later work in anthropology and statistics. In 1853, he published his first book, Tropical South Africa, which was based on his travels.

In the 1860s, Galton began to study heredity and developed the concept of eugenics, the idea that the human race could be improved by selective breeding. He also developed the statistical concept of correlation and the method of regression analysis.

Galton also made significant contributions to the field of psychometrics, the science of measuring mental faculties, and to meteorology, the study of weather. He invented the weather map and introduced the use of the fingerprint as a means of identification.

Legacy

Galton's work has had a lasting impact on a variety of fields. His contributions to statistics and his development of the concept of eugenics have been particularly influential. However, his ideas about eugenics have also been controversial and have been criticized for their potential for misuse.

See also

• Eugenics
• Psychometrics
• Regression analysis
• Correlation

References

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External links

• The Galton Institute
• The Galton Laboratory, University College London

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