Galton, Sir Francis 1822-1911
English scientist

Born in Birmingham, he studied medicine at the Birmingham Hospital and King's College London and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1846 he travelled in North Africa, and in 1850 explored unknown territory in South Africa, publishing Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa and Art of Travel (1853). His investigations in meteorology in Meteorographica (1863) were the basis for modern weather maps. He supported the evolutionary thinking of his cousin Charles Darwin, and devoted himself to heredity, founding and endowing the study of eugenics (the science of creating superior offspring), and publishing Hereditary Genius (1869), English Men of Science: their Nature and Nurture (1874) and Natural Inheritance (1889). He also devised the system of fingerprint identification with Finger Prints (1892). His researches into colour blindness and mental imagery were also of great value. He was elected FRS in 1856, and knighted in 1909.

Bibliography: Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton (3 vols in 4, 1914-30)