GALTON, SIR FRANCIS (1822-1911), English anthro pologist, was born on Feb. 16, 1822, at Birmingham and received his education at Birmingham hospital, at King's college, London, and at Trinity college, Cambridge. During 1845-46 he travelled in the Sudan, and in 1850 explored Damaraland and the Ovampo country in South-West Africa, publishing on his return, An Ex plorer in Tropical South Africa (1853, 2nd ed. 1889) and Art of Travel (1855). A visit to the north of Spain in 186o was described in Vacation Tourists.
Galton then turned to meteorology. His Meteorographica (1863) was the first serious attempt to chart the weather on an extensive scale, and in it also the author first established the existence and theory of anticyclones. About this time, Galton, inspired by his cousin's Origin of Species (18S9), began to study anthropology, heredity and the application of statistics to human attributes. In a series of remarkable publications, he laid the foundation of the science of eugenics. For the improvement of mankind, he ad vocated the furthering of the productivity of the fit and the re stricting of the birth-rate of the unfit. Galton also made special investigations of colour blindness, mental imagery, instincts, num ber forms and of criminality; he originated the process of com posite portraiture, and paid much attention to finger-prints and their employment for the identification of criminals. In 1909 he was knighted. He died at Haslemere on Jan. 17, 1911, founding by his will a laboratory for the study of national eugenics.
Galton's chief scientific works are: Hereditary Genius (1869) ; English Men of Science (1874) ; Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883) ; Record of Family Faculties (1884) ; Natural Inheritance ; Finger Prints (1892) ; Finger Print Directories ; Noteworthy Families ; Essays in Eugenics (1909).
See his Memories of My Life (1908) and K. Pearson's Life of Galton (2 vols., 1914-24) ; also the article ANTHROPOMETRY.