Erasmus Darwin composed lengthy technical treatises in verse. Both families were known for their literary talent. Both Erasmus Darwin and Samuel Galton were founding members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which included Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. The Galtons were Quaker gun-manufacturers and bankers, while the Darwins were involved in medicine and science.īoth the Galton and Darwin families included Fellows of the Royal Society and members who loved to invent in their spare time. He was also a cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton. His father was Samuel Tertius Galton, son of Samuel Galton, Jr. He was Charles Darwin's half-cousin, sharing the common grandparent Erasmus Darwin. Galton was born at "The Larches", a large house in the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham, England, built on the site of "Fair Hill", the former home of Joseph Priestley, which the botanist William Withering had renamed.
He was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883, and also coined the phrase " nature versus nurture".
He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies. He also created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean.
Galton produced over 340 papers and books. Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI ( / ˈ ɡ ɔː l t ən/ 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- geneticist, psychometrician and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism. Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1853)Īnthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Statistics