Noteworthy Families Modern Science

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Sir Francis Galton, FRS (16 February 1822 - 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, and psychometrician. He was knighted in 1909. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also 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 of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883, and also coined the phrase "nature versus nurture".

Book Excerpt:...ty of the numerous persons who have been eminent above their far more numerous fellows, each in his own special department, being unknown to the generality. The merits of such men can be justly appreciated only by reference to records of their achievements. Let no reader be so conceited as to believe his present ignorance of a particular person to be a proof that the person in question does not merit the title of noteworthy.I said what I have to say about the modern use of the word "genius" in the preface to the second edition of my "Hereditary Genius." It has only latterly lost its old and usual meaning, which is preserved in the term of an "ingenious" artisan, and has come to be applied to something akin to inspiration. This simply means, as I suppose, though some may think differently, that the powers of unconscious work...

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First published between 1914 and 1930, this biography offers a fascinating insight into the life of the eugenicist Francis Galton.