Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton (February 16, 1822 – January 17, 1911) British anthropologist, explorer, inventor, statistician, a pioneer in eugenics, investigator of the human mind, and the founder of the science of measuring mental faculties: psychometrics. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted in 1909.

Fingerprints

In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (1892, 1893 and 1895) Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. Galton wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day. The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by William Herschel in India, but their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880.

Related Topics:
Royal Institution - 1888 - 1892 - 1893 - 1895 - 1917 - Fingerprint - 1860s - William Herschel - Henry Faulds

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He also developed early theories of ranges of sound and hearing.

Related Topics:
Sound - Hearing

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Aged 86, he died in Haslemere, Surrey.

Related Topics:
Haslemere - Surrey

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