Galton was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin and from a learned and respected family. He was a brilliant child, able to read at 2 years and immersing himself in Shakespeare at the age of six. He was educated at King's College Medical School and Birmingham General Hospital with the aim of entering the medical profession. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge and received his MA in 1847. He then decided to forego medical studies and instead turned to extensive travel, visiting Egypt and most of the Middle East and much of Eastern Europe. In 1850, he became a member of the Royal Geographical Society and spent two years in Africa which he documented in Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. His cartographic survey of Namibia won him the Society's Gold Medal in 1853. He then published The Art of Travel (1853), which became a best-seller. Galton was the general secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1863 to 1867. In 1867, he became the president of the Geographical section and from 1877 to 1885 served as the president of the Anthropological section. He made important contributions to many fields including biology, geography, mathematics and anthropology. He is credited with the discovery of the anti-cyclone, historiometry, the regression line and many more. He was knighted in 1909. His many works include Ways and Means of Campaigning (1855), Meteorgraphica (1863), Hereditary Genius (1869), Inquiries Into Human Faculty (1883), Natural Inheritance (1889), Finger Prints (1892), Probability: The Foundation of Eugenics (1907) and Memories of My Life( (1908). |
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