Francis Galton Facts
Francis Galton Facts
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| Interesting Francis Galton Facts: |
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| Galton was born in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham, England to a wealthy family. |
| He was Charles Darwin's half-cousin and Darwin influenced Galton's later study. |
| Galton was a child prodigy and by age five he had learned some Latin, Greek and mathematics. |
| He attended King Edward's School in Birmingham but left at age 16 to study medicine. |
| For two years he studied medicine at Birmingham General Hospital and King's College in London. |
| From 1840 to 1844 he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge University. |
| A severe nervous breakdown cut short his path to PhD and he was awarded an M.A, in 1847. |
| This experience caused him to propose a link between genius and madness. |
| When his father died in 1844 and left him a substantial fortune he abandoned his studies and became an enthusiastic world traveler. |
| In 1850 he joined the Royal Geographical Society and mounted an expedition to South West Africa. |
| He wrote a successful book about his experience, "Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa," and was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's gold medal in 1853. |
| He wrote a practical hand-book for travelers, The Art of Travel, which was a best seller in its day and is still in print. |
| Galton made many contributions to the science of meteorology and on 1 April 1875 he created the first weather map printed in The Times. |
| Darwin's book The Origin of the Species fired a passion in Galton to study the physical and psychological variations in human populations and he created a laboratory for the large-scale collection of statistical data. |
| He coined the term eugenics in 1883 and his studies led him to reject the popular theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. |
| He pioneered the use of the questionnaire in his various studies. |
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