British eugenist, polymath, and behavioural geneticist (1822–1911)
People connected to Francis Galton
He invented fingerprint classification, mapped the first weather systems, and founded the statistical study of human difference — then spent decades trying to breed a better species. Galton gave us correlation, psychometrics, and the phrase "nature versus nurture"; he also gave us eugenics, a term he coined in 1883 and promoted as science.
Born in 1822, Francis Galton was Charles Darwin's half-cousin and a Victorian polymath who turned statistical methods toward everything from prayer's efficacy (he found none) to the optimal brewing of tea. His 1869 book Hereditary Genius launched the first systematic attempt to study inherited intelligence, and over the next four decades he produced more than 340 papers and books while founding psychometrics, differential psychology, and scientific meteorology. He developed the concept of correlation, promoted regression toward the mean, pioneered the use of questionnaires for collecting data…
Sourced, dated quotes from Francis Galton
What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.
[T]hough anthropometry owes an immense debt to Quetelet, we must be careful not to follow his principles and methods blindfold.
I do not plead guilty to a shallow view of human nature, when I propose to apply, as it were, a foot-rule to its heights and depths.
The long period of the dark ages... is due... in a very considerable degree, to the celebacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries.
There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed.
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