FRANCIS GALTON (1822–1911)

Francis Galton

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Francis Galton- Biography

Born in the year 1822, Sir Francis Galton contributed much in the fields of Statistics, Sociology, Geography, and Meteorology and proto- genetics. The number of books and journal articles published by him on the above subjects are nearly four hundred. In addition to his contributions in these areas of research, he explained the statistical concept of correlation. His contributions are not limited to these areas, but he also studies human intelligence. Many scientists and scholars of the present times believe that Sir Galton’s contributions laid the basis for many new findings in these areas. Forest mentions about him that unlike the contemporaries of his times, Galton’s contributions were so general and authentic that they can be used to refer to modern findings in sciences and humanities ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"4kkDQ3Nh","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Forrest 1974, 39)","plainCitation":"(Forrest 1974, 39)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1236,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/F7EMFHCR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/F7EMFHCR"],"itemData":{"id":1236,"type":"article-journal","title":"Francis Galton: The life and work of a Victorian genius.","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Francis Galton","author":[{"family":"Forrest","given":"Derek William"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1974"]]}},"locator":"39","label":"page"}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Forrest 1974, 39). He also mentions that Galton’s exposure to the universities and other educational institutions occurred in his early ages, which was absent in the case of other scientists of that times ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"4NGyCq0H","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Forrest 1974, 44)","plainCitation":"(Forrest 1974, 44)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1236,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/F7EMFHCR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/F7EMFHCR"],"itemData":{"id":1236,"type":"article-journal","title":"Francis Galton: The life and work of a Victorian genius.","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Francis Galton","author":[{"family":"Forrest","given":"Derek William"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1974"]]}},"locator":"44","label":"page"}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Forrest 1974, 44).

Since Sir Galton was born to a literate family, he was interested in reading and meteorological exploration from early life. His family wanted that Galton should study medicine, for this reason in the very early years of his college life, he visited different hospitals in England. In the year 1836, he was able to secure admission at King's College London, there he studied medicine. During his stay at the King's College, he started traveling the region. This exploration paved the way for literary writings. From Kings College London, he moved to Trinity College in Cambridge to further study medicine. In this phase of his academic career, he started writing research articles. His articles about medicine and biological inventions are considered as textual literature because of their rich content. During the last years of his stay at Trinity College, he left studying medicine and shifted to Mathematics. His exploration continued in this field too, but for some of his personal reasons, he shifted back to Medicine and continued his exploration.

In Forensic sciences, his contributions are also vast. The features of his contributions in the forensics are the amalgamation of these with biology. Such amalgamating made it easy to study forensic with a more lasting view. He believed that forensic is what human possess individually and should, therefore, be used in criminal investigations. Bulmer who has explored his contributions about forensic argues that throughout his academic career, he never studied criminology or forensic separately ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"9a5micbc","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bulmer 2003, 92)","plainCitation":"(Bulmer 2003, 92)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1238,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/UAR3QIWK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/UAR3QIWK"],"itemData":{"id":1238,"type":"book","title":"Francis Galton: pioneer of heredity and biometry","publisher":"JHU Press","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Francis Galton","author":[{"family":"Bulmer","given":"Michael"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2003"]]}},"locator":"92","label":"page"}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Bulmer 2003, 92). His expertise was in biological sciences, which he expanded to include forensics too. Another important feature of his inventions was the inclusion of heredity and racial differences. He believed that since there is an increasing trend in crimes and criminal motivations, therefore a broad approach should be used to study the changing attributes of crime and forensics. In some of his writings about the forensics, he identified the common and some different patterns of fingerprints in humans. Based on his findings, he proposed some theories about criminology and forensics.

Composite photography is also a worthy addition of Sir Galton. Composite photography proposed by him suggests that facial recognition could be used for criminal investigations. This technique proposed by him is still worthy and is used widely these days. Sigmund Freud, the prominent sociologist have quoted Sir Galton various times in his writings. He believes that forensic and criminology as a distinct field of study would not be there if Sir Galton has not explored some basic concepts related to it. Galton’s ideas about forensics were based on natural perceptions about the human body. He believed that since a point is needed to star the criminal investigations from a point, therefore, it could be worth rewarding that such investigations should start from the persons present at the crime scene ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"rSrrj5wT","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bulmer 2003, 136)","plainCitation":"(Bulmer 2003, 136)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1238,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/UAR3QIWK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/UAR3QIWK"],"itemData":{"id":1238,"type":"book","title":"Francis Galton: pioneer of heredity and biometry","publisher":"JHU Press","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Francis Galton","author":[{"family":"Bulmer","given":"Michael"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2003"]]}},"locator":"136","label":"page"}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Bulmer 2003, 136). Sir Galton was awarded various honorary medals and titles for his contributions in the field of forensic sciences.

References:

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Bulmer, Michael. 2003. Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry. JHU Press.

Forrest, Derek William. 1974. “Francis Galton: The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius.”