He was also a cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton. His father was Samuel Tertius Galton, son of Samuel Galton, Jr. He was Charles Darwin's half-cousin, sharing the common grandparent Erasmus Darwin. Galton was born at "The Larches", a large house in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham, England, built on the site of "Fair Hill", the former home of Joseph Priestley, which the botanist William Withering had renamed. He also invented the Galton Whistle for testing differential hearing ability. Īs the initiator of scientific meteorology, he devised the first weather map, proposed a theory of anticyclones, and was the first to establish a complete record of short-term climatic phenomena on a European scale. His quest for the scientific principles of diverse phenomena extended even to the optimal method for making tea. He also conducted research on the power of prayer, concluding it had none due to its null effects on the longevity of those prayed for. He devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science. Īs an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics (the science of measuring mental faculties) and differential psychology, as well as the lexical hypothesis of personality. His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. He was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883, and also coined the phrase " nature versus nurture". He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies.
He also created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI ( / ˈ ɡ ɔː l t ən/ 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- geneticist, psychometrician and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism. Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1853)Īnthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Statistics
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