Sir Francis GaltonBritish scientist

born Feb. 16, 1822, near Sparkbrook, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng. died Jan. 17, 1911, Grayshott House, Haslemere, Surrey

Galton’s family life was happy, and he gratefully acknowledged that he owed much to his father and mother. But he had little use for the conventional classical and religious teaching he received in school and church. Indeed, he later confessed in a letter to Charles Darwin that the traditional biblical arguments had made him “wretched.”

His parents had planned that he should study medicine, and a tour of medical institutions on the Continent in his teens—an unusual experience for a student of his age—was followed by training in hospitals in Birmingham and London. But at this time, in Galton’s words, “a passion for travel seized me as if I had been a migratory bird.” A visit to the University of Giessen, Germany, to attend lectures on chemistry was broken off in favour of travel in southeastern Europe. From Vienna he made his way through Constanza, Constantinople, Smyrna, and Athens, and he brought back from the caves of Adelsberg (present-day Postojina, Slovenia) specimens of a blind amphibian named Proteus—the first to reach England. On his return Galton went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, as a result of overwork, he broke down in his third year. But he recovered quickly on changing his mode of life, as he did from similar attacks later.