Galton , Sir , Francis , 1822-1911 , Knight , eugenicist

Francis Galton was born in Birmingham on the 16th February 1822. His father was Samuel Tertius Galton (1783-1844), a banker, and his mother was Frances Anne Violetta Darwin (1783-1874), daughter of the physician Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). Through his mother's family he was a cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin.

Galton was educated in Kenilworth and at King Edward's School, Birmingham, until the age of sixteen. Following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, he was enrolled to study medicine at Birmingham General Hospital in 1838 and moved to King's College Medical School in 1839. However, he gave up his medical education and in 1840 spent six months travelling through Europe, Turkey and Syria. On his return he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge to read mathematics and was awarded his BA in 1844. When his father died later that year, a generous inheritance allowed Galton to give up his plans to study medicine at Cambridge and instead he embarked on a year-long tour of the Middle East.

In 1850 he explored south-west Africa on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society and later published two books as a result of his experiences: Tropical South Africa (1852) and The Art of Travel (1855). He married Louisa Jane Butler in 1855 and they established a home in Rutland Gate in South Kensington, London.

Galton then devoted his life to the study of diverse fields, including the weather, physical and mental characteristics in man and animals, the influence of heredity, heredity in twins, and fingerprints. He was preoccupied with counting and measuring, and collected a huge amount of statistical data to support his research.

Today, Galton is perhaps best known for his studies into the inheritance of mental characteristics in humans, for example estimating the frequency with which eminent individuals come from similarly distinguished families. His questionable hypotheses and methods led him to conclude that talents could be inherited, and later in his life he was zealous in advocating the study of "those agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally". He invented the word "eugenics" to describe this. Many of his genetic theories, such as eugenics, have since been discredited, although his study into the concept of inheritance - that certain physical characteristics can be passed from one generation to the next - is an important legacy.

One of Galton's other important legacies was his work on fingerprints. He discovered that a person's fingerprints could be used for personal identification because they are unique and do not change throughout a person's lifetime. His archive contains a large number of examples of fingerprints, which he used to create a taxonomic system still in use today. Galton also carried out further studies into the method of inheritance, for example disproving Charles Darwin's theory of pangenesis (inheritance via particles in the bloodstream) and making various discoveries through his data analysis that eventually formed the basis of biostatistics.

Galton was also involved in many societies and organisations, particularly the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was on the governing committee of the Meteorological Office from 1868 to 1900. He founded the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics at University College London to further his work on eugenics, although under the leadership of L S Penrose in the 1960s the name of this department was changed to the Galton Laboratory, Department of Human Genetics and Biometry.

Francis Galton died on the 17 January 1911 and he was buried at the Galton family vault in Claverdon, Warwickshire. His wife Louisa predeceased him; they had no children.