Francis Galton

Francis Galton
Born	February 16, 1822 Birmingham, England
Died	January 17, 1911 Haslemere, Surrey, England
Residence	UK
Nationality	British
Field	Anthropologist and polymath
Institutions	Meteorological Council Royal Geographical Society
Alma mater	King's College London Cambridge University
Academic advisor	William Hopkins
Notable students	Karl Pearson
Known for	Eugenics The Galton board
Notable prizes	Copley medal (1910)

Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. (February 16, 1822 – January 17, 1911), half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1822 (MDCCCXXII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... The city from above Centenary Square. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem God Save the King (Queen) England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Queen Queen Elizabeth II  -  Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification  -  by Athelstan 967  Area... January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... Haslemere is a town in Surrey in southern England, with a population of nearly 14,000. ... Not to be confused with Surry. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem God Save the King (Queen) England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Queen Queen Elizabeth II  -  Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification  -  by Athelstan 967  Area... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom. ... See Anthropology. ... Leonardo da Vinci is seen as an epitome of the Renaissance man or polymath A polymath (Greek polymathÄ“s, πολυμαθής, meaning knowing, understanding, or having learnt in quantity, compounded from πολυ- much, many, and the root μαθ-, meaning learning, understanding[1]) is a person well educated in a wide variety of subjects or... The Royal Geographical Society is a learned society, founded in 1830 with the name Geographical Society of London for the advancement of geographical science, under the patronage of King William IV. It absorbed the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa (founded by Joseph Banks in... Kings College London is the largest college of the University of London and one of a number of university institutions founded in England in the early 19th century: only the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have royal charters predating that of Kings. ... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... William Hopkins (February 2, 1793 – October 13, 1866) was an English mathematician and geologist. ... Karl Pearson (pencil sketch in notebook; there is some see-through of writing on next page) Karl Pearson (March 27, 1857 – April 27, 1936) was a major contributor to the early development of statistics as a serious scientific discipline in its own right. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... The bean machine, also known as the quincunx or Galton box, is a device invented by Sir Francis Galton to demonstrate the law of error and the normal distribution. ... The Copley Medal is a scientific award for work in any field of science, the highest award granted by the Royal Society of London. ... The Fellowship of the Royal Society was founded in 1660. ... February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1822 (MDCCCXXII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... For other people of the same surname, and places and things named after Charles Darwin, see Darwin. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem God Save the King (Queen) England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Queen Queen Elizabeth II  -  Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification  -  by Athelstan 967  Area... Queen Victoria (shown here on the morning of her Ascension to the Throne, 20 June 1837) gave her name to the historic era The Victorian era of the United Kingdom marked the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. ... Leonardo da Vinci is seen as an epitome of the Renaissance man or polymath A polymath (Greek polymathÄ“s, πολυμαθής, meaning knowing, understanding, or having learnt in quantity, compounded from πολυ- much, many, and the root μαθ-, meaning learning, understanding[1]) is a person well educated in a wide variety of subjects or... See Anthropology. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... This list of explorers is sorted by surname. ... A geographer is a crazy psycho whose area of study is geocrap, the pseudoscientific study of Earths physical environment and human habitat and the study of boring students to death. ... For other uses, see Inventor (disambiguation). ... Meteorology is the scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. ... Look up geneticist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits. ... Statisticians are mathematicians who work with theoretical and applied statistics in the both the private and public sectors. ...

Galton had a prolific intellect, and produced over 340 papers and books throughout his lifetime. He created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. 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 was a pioneer in eugenics, coining the very term itself and the phrase "nature versus nurture". As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics (the science of measuring mental faculties) and differential psychology. He devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science. As 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. [1] He also invented the silent dog whistle, and the electrocardiograph. Positive linear correlations between 1000 pairs of numbers. ... In statistics regression toward the mean, sometimes called the regression effect in other disciplines, is a principle stating a relationship between a measurement that is used to split a population into groups, and a second measurement of the groups thereby created. ... The subject of the inheritance of intelligence is the genetics of mental abilities. ... A questionnaire is a type of survey handed out in paper form usually to a specific demographic to gather information in order to provider better service or goods. ... Statistical surveys are used to collect quantitative information about items in a population. ... Anthropometry literally means measurement of humans. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits. ... Differential psychology is concerned with the study of individual differences in humans. ... The tip of a finger showing the friction ridge structure. ... Crime Scene, done by the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command Forensic science (often shortened to forensics) is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to the legal system. ... Satellite image of Hurricane Hugo with a polar low visible at the top of the image. ... These symbols, showing various weather fronts, might be found on a weather map. ... In meteorology, an anticyclone (that is, opposite to a cyclone) is a weather phenomenon in which there is a descending movement of the air and a high pressure area over the part of the planets surface affected by it. ... A dog whistle (also known as silent whistle or Galtons whistle) is a type of whistle used in the training of dogs and cats. ... ECG may also refer to the East Coast Greenway Lead II An Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG, abbreviated from the German Elektrokardiogramm) is a graphic produced by an electrocardiograph, which records the electrical voltage in the heart in the form of a continuous strip graph. ...

Biography

Early life

He was born near Sparkbrook, Birmingham and was Charles Darwin's half-cousin, sharing the common grandparent Erasmus Darwin. His father was Samuel Tertius Galton, son of Samuel "John" Galton. The Galtons were famous and highly successful Quaker gun-manufacturers and bankers, while the Darwins were distinguished in medicine and science. Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency shown within Birmingham Sparkbrook is an area in south-east Birmingham, England. ... The city from above Centenary Square. ... For other people of the same surname, and places and things named after Charles Darwin, see Darwin. ... Stone-cast bust of Erasmus Darwin, by W. J. Coffee, c 1795 Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802), an English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, inventor and poet. ... Samuel Tertius Galton (1783-1844) was a businessman and scientist. ... Samuel Galton Samuel John Galton Jr. ...

Both families boasted Fellows of the Royal Society and members who loved to invent in their spare time. Both Erasmus Darwin and Samuel Galton were founder members of the famous Lunar Society of Birmingham, whose members included Boulton, Watt, Wedgwood, Priestley, Edgeworth, and other distinguished scientists and industrialists. Likewise, both families boasted literary talent, with Erasmus Darwin notorious for composing lengthy technical treatises in verse, and Aunt Mary Anne Galton known for her writing on aesthetics and religion, and her notable autobiography detailing the unique environment of her childhood populated by Lunar Society members. The Lunar Society was a discussion club of prominent industrialists and scientists, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham, England. ... Matthew Boulton. ... James Watt James Watt (19 January 1736 – 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. ... Josiah Wedgwood Josiah Wedgwood (July 12, 1730 – January 3, 1795) was an English potter, credited with the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. ... Joseph Frederick Priestley is often credited for the discovery of oxygen. ... Richard Edgeworth, 1812 Richard Lovell Edgeworth (May 31, 1744-June 13, 1817) was a British writer and inventor. ... Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (née Galton; November 25, 1778-August 29, 1856) was a British Christian writer in the anti-slavery movement. ...

Portrait of Galton by Octavius Oakley, 1840

Galton was by many accounts a child prodigy--he was reading by the age of 2, at age 5 he knew some Greek, Latin and long division, and by the age of six he had moved on to adult books, including Shakespeare for pleasure, and poetry, which he quoted at length. He attended numerous schools, but chafed at the narrow classical curriculum, which bored him. His parents pressed him to enter the medical profession, and he studied for two years at Birmingham General hospital and King's College Medical School in London. He followed this up with mathematical studies at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, from 1840 to early 1844. A severe nervous breakdown altered his original intention to try for honours. He elected instead to take a "poll" (pass) B.A. degree, like his cousin Charles Darwin. (Following the Cambridge custom, he was awarded an M.A. without further study, in 1847). He then briefly resumed his medical studies. The death of his father in 1844 left him financially independent but emotionally destitute, and he terminated his medical studies entirely, turning to foreign travel, sport and technical invention. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... A child prodigy is someone who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age. ... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ...

In his early years Galton was an enthusiastic traveler, and made a notable solo trip through Eastern Europe to Constantinople, before going up to Cambridge. In 1845 and 1846 he went to Egypt and traveled down the Nile to Khartoum in the Sudan, and from there to Beirut, Damascus and down the Jordan. In 1850 he joined the Royal Geographical Society, and over the next two years mounted a long and difficult expedition into then little-known South-Western Africa (now Namibia). He wrote a successful book on his experience, "Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa". He was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's gold medal in 1853 and the Silver Medal of the French Geographical Society for his pioneering cartographic survey of the region. This established his reputation as a geographer and explorer. He proceeded to write the best-selling The Art of Travel, a handbook of practical advice for the Victorian on the move, which went through many editions and still reappears in print today.

In 1853 he married Louisa Butler, who also came from an intellectually distinguished family, and after a honeymoon in Florence and Rome, they took up residence in South Kensington, where he remained almost until his death in 1911. They had no children.

Middle years

Galton was a polymath who made important contributions in many fields of science, including geography, statistics, biology and anthropology. Much of this was influenced by his penchant for counting or measuring. The result was a blizzard of discoveries and investigations as varied as detailed research into the perfect cup of tea (i.e. put teabag in cup, add boiling water and then sugar and milk, etc etc...) and his discovery of the anti-cyclone. He became very active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, presenting many papers on a wide variety of topics at its meetings from 1858 to 1899. He was the general secretary from 1863 to 1867, president of the Geographical section in 1867 and 1872, and president of the Anthropological Section in 1877 and 1885. Leonardo da Vinci is seen as an epitome of the Renaissance man or polymath A polymath (Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, meaning knowing, understanding, or having learnt in quantity, compounded from πολυ- much, many, and the root μαθ-, meaning learning, understanding[1]) is a person well educated in a wide variety of subjects or... In meteorology, an anticyclone is a weather phenomenon associated with atmospheric high pressure. ... The British Association or the British Association for the Advancement of Science or the BA is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating intercourse between scientific workers. ...

Heredity, historiometry and eugenics

The event that changed his life and gave him direction was the publication by his cousin Charles Darwin of The Origin of Species in 1859. Galton was gripped by the work, especially the first chapter on "Variation under Domestication" concerning the breeding of domestic animals. He devoted much of the rest of his life to exploring its implications for human populations, which Darwin had only hinted at. In doing so, he ultimately established a research programme that came to embrace all aspects of human variation, from mental characteristics to height, from facial images to fingerprint patterns. This required inventing novel measures of traits, devising large-scale collection of data using those measures, and in the end the discovery of new statistical techniques for describing and understanding the data gathered. British naturalist Charles Darwins book, The Origin of Species, is one of the pivotal works in scientific literature and arguably the pre-eminent work in biology. ... 1859 (MDCCCLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar). ...

Galton was interested at first in the question of whether human ability was indeed hereditary, and proposed to count the number of the relatives of various degrees of eminent men. If the qualities were hereditary, he reasoned, there should be more eminent men among the relatives, than among the general population. He obtained his data from various biographical sources and compared the results that he tabulated in various ways. This pioneering work was described in detail in his book Hereditary Genius in 1869. He showed, among other things, that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when going from the first degree to the second degree relatives, and from the second degree to the third. He took this as evidence of the inheritance of abilities. He also proposed adoption studies, including trans-racial adoption studies, to separate out the effects of heredity and environment. The subject of the inheritance of intelligence is the genetics of mental abilities. ...

The method used in Hereditary Genius has been described as the first example of historiometry. To bolster these results, and to attempt to make a distinction between 'nature' and 'nurture' (he was the first to apply this phrase to the topic) he devised a questionnaire that he sent out to 190 Fellows of the Royal Society. He tabulated characteristics of their families, such as birth order and the occupation and race of their parents. He attempted to discover whether their interest in science were "innate" or due to the encouragements of others. The studies were published as a book, English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture in 1874. In the end, it illuminated the nature versus nurture question, though it did not settle it, and provided some fascinating data on the sociology of scientists of the time. Historiometry measures the number of references to great people and discoveries in relatively neutral texts in an attempt to quantify human progress. ... The premises of The Royal Society in London (first four properties only). ... Will the younger sister be more pampered than the firstborn? The phrase birth order is defined as a persons rank by age among his or her brothers and sisters. ... This article concerns the term race as used in reference to human beings. ... The nature versus nurture debates concern the relative importance of an individuals innate qualities (nature) versus personal experiences (nurture) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits. ...

Galton recognized the limitations of his methods in these two works, and believed the question could be better studied by comparisons of twins. His method was to see if twins who were similar at birth diverged in dissimilar environments, and whether twins dissimilar at birth converged when reared in similar environments. He again used the method of questionnaires to gather various sorts of data, which were tabulated and described in a paper "The History of Twins" in 1875. In so doing he anticipated the modern field of behavior genetics, which relies heavily on twin studies. He concluded that the evidence favored nature rather than nurture. Behavioural genetics (behavioral genetics) is the field of biology that studies the role of genetics in animal behaviour. ... Twin study - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...

Galton invented the term eugenics in 1883 and set down many of his observations and conclusions in a book, Inquiries in Human Faculty and its Development.[2] He believed that a scheme of 'marks' for family merit should be defined, and early marriage between families of high rank be encouraged by provision of monetary incentives. He pointed out some of the tendencies in British society, such as the late marriages of eminent people, and the paucity of their children, that he considered dysgenic. He advocated encouraging eugenic marriages by supplying incentives for those able to have children. Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... Dysgenics is a term applied by some researchers to describe the evolutionary weakening of a population of organisms relative to their environment, often due to relaxation of natural selection or the occurrence of negative selection. ...

Galton's study of human abilities ultimately led to the foundation of differential psychology, the formulation of the first mental tests, and the scientific study of human intelligence. Many of his insights have taken many decades of research to verify; for example, his study of reaction time as a measure of intelligence was only vindicated a hundred years later, as was his assertion of a relationship between head size and intelligence. A modern study has reported that the correlation between brain size (reported to have a heritability of 0.85) and g is 0.4 (Posthuma et al 2002). Heritability, as used professionally in genetics, has a very precise definition. ... The general intelligence factor (abbreviated g) is a controversial construct used in the field of psychology (see also psychometrics) to quantify what is common to the scores of all intelligence tests. ...

Galton conducted wide-ranging inquiries into heredity. In the process he was able to refute Charles Darwin's hypothetical theory of pangenesis. Darwin had proposed as part of this hypothesis that certain particles, which he called 'gemmules' moved throughout the body and were also responsible for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Galton, in consultation with Darwin, set out to see if they were transported in the blood. In a long series of experiments in 1869 to 1871, he transfused the blood between dissimilar breeds of rabbits, and examined the features of their offspring. He found no evidence of characters transmitted in the transfused blood. Galton explicitly rejected the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism), and was an early proponent of "hard heredity" through selection alone. Pangenesis was Charles Darwins hypothetical mechanism for heredity. ... Gemmules In the late 1800s Charles Darwin and others proposed a mechanism of inheritance of acquired characteristics by means of gemmules (a. ... Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution is a theory put forward by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, based on heritability of acquired characteristics, the once widely accepted idea that an organism can acquire characteristics during its lifetime and pass them on to its offspring. ...

Galton came close to rediscovering Mendel's particulate theory of inheritance, but was prevented from making the final breakthrough in this regard because of his focus on continuous, rather than discrete, traits (now known as polygenic traits). He went on to found the Biometric approach to the study of heredity, distinguished by its use of statistical techniques to study continuous traits and population-scale aspects of heredity. This approach was later taken up enthusiastically by Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon; together, they founded the highly influential journal Biometrika in 1901. (R.A. Fisher would later show how the biometrical approach could be reconciled with the Mendelian approach.) The statistical techniques that Galton invented (correlation, regression - see below) and phenomena he established (regression to the mean) formed the basis of the biometric approach and are now essential tools in all the social sciences. Karl Pearson (pencil sketch in notebook; there is some see-through of writing on next page) Karl Pearson (March 27, 1857 – April 27, 1936) was a major contributor to the early development of statistics as a serious scientific discipline in its own right. ... Walter Frank Raphael Weldon Walter Frank Raphael Weldon (15 March 1860 — 13 April 1906) was an English evolutionary zoologist and biometrician. ... Biometrika is a scientific journal established in 1901 by Francis Galton, Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon to promote the study of biometrics, the statistical analysis of hereditary phenomena. ... 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Sir Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS (February 17, 1890–July 29, 1962) was an extraordinarily talented evolutionary biologist, geneticist and statistician. ...

Galton also devised a technique called composite photography, described in detail in Inquiries in Human Faculty and its Development, which he believed could be used to identify 'types' by appearance, which he hoped would aid medical diagnosis, and even criminology through the identification of typical criminal faces. However, he was forced to conclude after exhaustive experimentation that such types were not attainable in practice.

Statistics, regression and correlation

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, which he elicited by his pioneering use of the questionnaire. Visual memory is a part of memory preserving some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. ... A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. ...

Galton invented the use of the regression line, and was the first to describe and explain the common phenomenon of regression toward the mean, which he first observed in his experiments on the size of the seeds of successive generations of sweet peas. In the 1870s and 1880s he was a pioneer in the use of normal distribution to fit histograms of actual tabulated data. He invented the Quincunx, a pachinko-like device, also known as the bean machine, as a tool for demonstrating the law of error and the normal distribution. He also discovered the properties of the bivariate normal distribution and its relationship to regression analysis. In statistics regression toward the mean, sometimes called the regression effect in other disciplines, is a principle stating a relationship between a measurement that is used to split a population into groups, and a second measurement of the groups thereby created. ... // The invention of the telephone (1876) by Alexander Graham Bell. ... // Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ... The normal distribution, also called Gaussian distribution by scientists (named after Carl Friedrich Gauss due to his rigorous application of the distribution to astronomical data (Havil, 2003)), is a continuous probability distribution of great importance in many fields. ... The bean machine, also known as the quincunx or Galton box, is a device invented by Sir Francis Galton to demonstrate the law of error and the normal distribution. ... Classic pachinko machine Pachinko parlor at night Entrance to pachinko parlor in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. ... The bean machine, also known as the quincunx or Galton box, is a device invented by Sir Francis Galton to demonstrate the law of error and the normal distribution. ... Probability density function of Gaussian distribution (bell curve). ... The normal distribution, also called Gaussian distribution by scientists (named after Carl Friedrich Gauss due to his rigorous application of the distribution to astronomical data (Havil, 2003)), is a continuous probability distribution of great importance in many fields. ... In probability theory and statistics, a multivariate normal distribution, also sometimes called a multivariate Gaussian distribution (in honor of Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was not the first to write about the normal distribution) is a specific probability density function. ... In statistics, regression analysis examines the relation of a dependent variable (response variable) to specified independent variables (predictors). ...

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. Positive linear correlations between 1000 pairs of numbers. ... Year 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Galton-Watson process is a stochastic process arising from Francis Galtons statistical investigation of the extinction of surnames. ...

He also developed early theories of ranges of sound and hearing, and collected large quantities of anthropometric data from the public through his popular and long-running Anthropometric Laboratory. It was not until 1985 that this data was analyzed in its entirety. Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a longitudinal wave, and therefore is a mechanical wave. ... Hearing is one of the traditional five senses, and refers to the ability to detect sound. ...

Fingerprints

Galton in his old age.

In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (1892, 1893 and 1895) Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently 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. The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by William Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880, but Galton was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, without which it would not have been accepted by the courts. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... The Royal Institution of Great Britain was set up in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president George Finch, the 9th Earl of Winchilsea, for diffusing the knowledge, and facilitating the general introduction, of useful mechanical inventions and improvements; and for... Year 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... The tip of a finger showing the friction ridge structure. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... // The First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA is built in the six year period between 1863 and 1869. ... Dr Henry Faulds (1 June 1843 - 1930) was a Scottish scientist who is noted for the development of fingerprinting. ...

Final years

In an effort to reach a wider audience, Galton worked on a novel entitled ‘Kantsaywhere’, from May until December of 1910. The novel described a utopia organized by a eugenic religion, designed to breed fitter and smarter humans. His unpublished notebooks show that this was an expansion of material he had been composing since at least 1901. He offered it to Methuen for publication, but they showed little enthusiasm. Galton wrote to his niece that it should be either “smothered or superseded”. His niece appears to have burnt most of the novel, offended by the love scenes, but large fragments survive (see [3]). A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Sunday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... Methuen & Co Limited is a firm of British publishers, which began publishing in London in 1892. ...

Honors and impact

He received in 1853 the highest award from the Royal Geographical Society, one of two gold medals awarded that year, for his explorations and map-making of southwest Africa. He was elected a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Club in 1855 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860. Over the course of his career he received every major award the Victorian scientific establishment could offer, including the Copley medal of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1909. His statistical heir Karl Pearson, first holder of the Galton Chair of Eugenics at University College London, wrote a three-volume biography of Galton after his death (1914, 1924, 1930). The eminent psychometrician Lewis Terman estimated that his childhood I.Q. was on the order of 200, based on the fact that he consistently performed mentally at roughly twice his chronological age.^{[citation needed]} The Royal Geographical Society is a learned society, founded in 1830 with the name Geographical Society of London for the advancement of geographical science, under the patronage of King William IV. It absorbed the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa (founded by Joseph Banks in... The Athenaeum Club in 1830. ... The Fellowship of the Royal Society was founded in 1660. ... 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. ... The Copley Medal is a scientific award for work in any field of science, the highest award granted by the Royal Society of London. ... 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Karl Pearson (pencil sketch in notebook; there is some see-through of writing on next page) Karl Pearson (March 27, 1857 – April 27, 1936) was a major contributor to the early development of statistics as a serious scientific discipline in its own right. ... University College London, commonly known as UCL, is a college of the University of London. ... Lewis Madison Terman (born 15 January 1877 in Johnson County, Indiana, died 21 December 1956 in Palo Alto, California) was a U.S psychologist, noted as a pioneer in cognitive psychology in the early 20th century at Stanford University. ... ...

See also

• A Large Attendance In The Antechamber, a play about Galton
• Historiometry
• Darwin — Wedgwood family for Darwin, Wedgwood and Galton's family tree

A Large Attendance In The Antechamber is a one-man play by Brian Lipson about Francis Galton the English scientist, statistician and founder of the eugenics movement. ... Historiometry measures the number of references to great people and discoveries in relatively neutral texts in an attempt to quantify human progress. ... The Darwin — Wedgwood family was a prominent English family, descended from Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin. ...

Footnotes

Other References

• Gillham, Nicholas Wright (2001). A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. Oxford University Press: New York. ISBN 0-19-514365-5
• Bulmer, Michael (2003). Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7403-3

External links

• Galton's Complete Works at Galton.org (including all his published books, all his published scientific papers, and popular periodical and newspaper writing, as well as other previously unpublished work and biographical material).
• Works by Francis Galton at Project Gutenberg
• Portraits of Galton from the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)
• The Galton laboratory homepage (originally The Francis Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics) at University College London
• O'Connor, John J.; Edmund F. Robertson "Francis Galton". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.  
• Biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
• History and Mathematics
• Human Memory - University of Amsterdam website with test based on the work of Galton