- Wikipedia

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\"Galton\" redirects here. For other uses, see Galton (disambiguation).

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Sir Francis Galton FRS FRAI
Galton in the 1850s or 1860s
Born	(1822-02-16)16 February 1822 Birmingham, England
Died	17 January 1911(1911-01-17) (aged 88) Haslemere, Surrey, England
Resting place	Claverdon, Warwickshire, England
Education	King's College, London Trinity College, Cambridge
Known for	Eugenics Behavioural genetics Regression toward the mean Standard deviation Anticyclone Isochrone map Weather map Galton board Galton distribution Galton\u2013Watson process Galton's problem Galton's whistle
Father	Samuel Tertius Galton
Relatives	Charles Darwin (cousin), Erasmus Darwin (maternal grandfather), Samuel Galton Jr. (paternal grandfather), Douglas Strutt Galton, cousin
Awards	Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1853) Royal Medal (1886) Huxley Memorial Medal (1901) Darwin\u2013Wallace Medal (Silver, 1908) Knight Bachelor (1909) Copley Medal (1910)
Scientific career
Fields	Anthropology, sociology, psychology, statistics
Institutions	Meteorological Council Royal Geographical Society
Academic advisors	William Hopkins
Notable students	Karl Pearson
Author abbrev. (zoology)	F. Galton, Galton
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Sir Francis Galton FRS FRAI (/\u02c8\u0261\u0254\u02d0lt\u0259n/; 16 February 1822 \u2013 17 January 1911) was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics.^[1]^[2]\n

Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also developed 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 coined the phrase \"nature versus nurture\".^[3] His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness.^[4]\n

As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics and differential psychology, as well as the lexical hypothesis of personality. He devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science. 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.^[5] His quest for the scientific principles of diverse phenomena extended even to the optimal method for making tea.^[6] 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.^[7] He also invented the Galton whistle for testing differential hearing ability.^[8] Galton was knighted in 1909 for his contributions to science.^[9] He was Charles Darwin's half-cousin.^[10] \n

In recent years, he has received significant criticism for being a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and biological racism; he was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883.^[11]^[12]\n

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v t e Obsolete definitions of race
\n Racism \n Scientific racism \n Pseudoscience \n
Color terminology	\n Black \n Bronze \n Brown \n Olive \n Red \n White \n
Concepts	\n Australoid \n Capoid \n Caucasoid\n Alpine \n Arabid \n Armenoid \n Aryan \n Atlantid \n Caspian \n Dinaric \n East Baltic \n Ethiopid \n Hamites \n Indid \n Iranid \n Mediterranean \n Nordic \n Semites \n Turanid \n Malay \n Mongoloid\n Proto-Mongoloid \n Sinodonty and Sundadonty \n Negroid\n Negrito \n
Sociological	\n in India \n Passing \n Racial discrimination\n Racism \n Racial stereotypes \n Colorism \n Master race \n Nazism and race \n Racial hygiene \n Whiteness studies \n N\u00e9gritude \n
Writers	\n Louis Agassiz \n John Baker \n Erwin Baur \n John Beddoe \n Robert Bennett Bean \n Fran\u00e7ois Bernier \n Renato Biasutti \n Johann Friedrich Blumenbach \n Franz Boas \n Daniel Garrison Brinton \n Paul Broca \n Alice Mossie Brues \n Halfdan Bryn \n Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon \n Charles Caldwell \n Petrus Camper \n Samuel A. Cartwright \n Houston Stewart Chamberlain \n Sonia Mary Cole \n Carleton S. Coon \n Georges Cuvier \n Jan Czekanowski \n Charles Davenport \n Joseph Deniker \n Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt \n Ant\u00e9nor Firmin \n Eugen Fischer \n Francis Galton \n Stanley Marion Garn \n Reginald Ruggles Gates \n George Gliddon \n Arthur de Gobineau \n Madison Grant \n John Grattan \n Hans F. K. G\u00fcnther \n Ernst Haeckel \n Frederick Ludwig Hoffman \n Earnest Hooton \n Julian Huxley \n Thomas Henry Huxley \n Calvin Ira Kephart \n Robert Knox \n Robert E. Kuttner \n Georges Vacher de Lapouge \n Fritz Lenz \n Carl Linnaeus \n Cesare Lombroso \n Bertil Lundman \n Felix von Luschan \n Dominick McCausland \n John Mitchell \n Ashley Montagu \n Lewis H. Morgan \n Samuel George Morton \n Josiah C. Nott \n Karl Pearson \n Roger Pearson \n Oscar Peschel \n Isaac La Peyr\u00e8re \n Charles Pickering \n Ludwig Hermann Plate \n Alfred Ploetz \n James Cowles Prichard \n Otto Reche \n Gustaf Retzius \n William Z. Ripley \n Alfred Rosenberg \n Benjamin Rush \n Henric Sanielevici \n Heinrich Schmidt \n Ilse Schwidetzky \n Charles Gabriel Seligman \n Giuseppe Sergi \n Samuel Stanhope Smith \n Herbert Spencer \n Morris Steggerda \n Lothrop Stoddard \n William Graham Sumner \n Thomas Griffith Taylor \n Paul Topinard \n John H. Van Evrie \n Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer \n Alexander Winchell \n Ludwig Woltmann \n
Publications	\n An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates (1744) \n The Outline of History of Mankind (1785) \n Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question (1849) \n An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) \n The Races of Europe (Ripley, 1899) \n The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) \n Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907) \n Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911) \n Castes in India (1916) \n The Passing of the Great Race (1916) \n The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920) \n The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) \n Annihilation of Caste (1936) \n An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus (1943) \n The Race Question (1950) \n
Related	\n Ethnogenesis \n Eugenics \n Great chain of being \n History of anthropometry \n Miscegenation \n Monogenism \n Multiracial \n Polygenism \n Pre-Adamite \n Pre-modern conceptions of whiteness \n

Authority control databases $\"Edit$
International	ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat
National	Germany United States France 2 BnF data 2 Japan Australia Czech Republic Spain Portugal Netherlands Norway Latvia Sweden Poland Vatican Israel Belgium
Academics	CiNii Mathematics Genealogy Project zbMATH MathSciNet
Artists	ULAN RKD Artists Photographers' Identities
People	Trove Deutsche Biographie DDB
Other	IdRef SNAC

Early life

Middle years

Early scientific career

Heredity and eugenics

Model for population stability

Empirical test of pangenesis and Lamarckism

1884 International Health Exhibition

Anthropometric Laboratory

Statistical innovation and psychological theory

Historiometry

The lexical hypothesis

The questionnaire

Variance and standard deviation

Experimental derivation of the normal distribution

Bivariate normal distribution

Correlation and regression

Regression toward the mean

Theories of perception

Differential psychology

Composite photography

Fingerprints

Views

Personal life and character

Awards and influence

Published works

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links

Francis Galton

Media collections