Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton FRS (February 16, 1822 - January 17, 1911) was an English explorer, statistician, anthropologist, advocate of eugenics (he coined the term), and investigator of the human mind.

Historiometry and statistics

He was born into the Darwin -- Wedgwood family near Sparkbrook, Birmingham and was Charles Darwin's half first cousin, his mother and Darwin's father having been children of Erasmus Darwin by separate marriages. His inquiries into the mind involved detailed recording of subjects' own explanations for whether and how their minds dealt with things such as mental imagery.

Galton's 1869 work, Hereditary Genius, popularised historiometry. In statistics, Galton was the first to describe and explain the common phenomenon of regression toward the mean in the 1870s and 1880s. After examining forearm and height measurements, Galton introduced the concept of correlation in 1888. His statistical study of the probability of extinction of surnames led to the concept of Galton-Watson stochastic processes.

Fingerprint

The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by William Herschel (civil servant) in India, but their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880. In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (1892, 1893 and 1895) Galton wrote about the technique (inadvertantly sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day. He also estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints.

Galton invented the Quincunx, also known as the bean machine as a tool for demonstrating the law of error and the normal distribution.

Galton was knighted in 1909, and died in Haslemere, Surrey.

External Link

Galton's published work (including all his major books and over 300 of his scientific papers)

	Topics relating to Charles Darwin
	Family: Erasmus Darwin (grandfather) - Josiah Wedgwood (maternal grandfather) - Emma Darwin (wife) - William Darwin; Anne Darwin; Etty Darwin; George Darwin; Elizabeth Darwin; Francis Darwin; Leonard Darwin; Horace Darwin; Charles Waring Darwin (children) - Francis Galton (cousin)
	Contributions to evolutionary biology: Evolution by means of natural and sexual selection.
	Books: The Voyage of the Beagle - The Origin of Species - The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
	Named in honour of Darwin: Darwin Medal - Darwin, Australia - Charles Darwin University, Darwin College, Cambridge