---
title: "Francis Galton"
chunk: 8/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Composite photography ===
Galton also devised a technique called "composite portraiture" (produced by superimposing multiple photographic portraits of individuals' faces registered on their eyes) to create an average face (see averageness). In the 1990s, a hundred years after his discovery, much psychological research has examined the attractiveness of these faces, an aspect that Galton had remarked on in his original lecture. Others, including Sigmund Freud in his work on dreams, picked up Galton's suggestion that these composites might represent a useful metaphor for an Ideal type or a concept of a "natural kind" (see Eleanor Rosch)—such as Jewish men, criminals, patients with tuberculosis, etc.—onto the same photographic plate, thereby yielding a blended whole, or "composite", that he hoped could generalise the facial appearance of his subject into an "average" or "central type". (See also entry Modern physiognomy under Physiognomy).
This work began in the 1880s while the Jewish scholar Joseph Jacobs studied anthropology and statistics with Francis Galton. Jacobs asked Galton to create a composite photograph of a Jewish type. One of Jacobs' first publications that used Galton's composite imagery was "The Jewish Type, and Galton's Composite Photographs", Photographic News, 29, (24 April 1885): 268–269.
Galton hoped his technique would aid medical diagnosis, and even criminology through the identification of typical criminal faces. However, his technique did not prove useful and fell into disuse, although after much work on it including by photographers Lewis Hine, John L. Lovell and Arthur Batut.

=== Fingerprints ===
The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880. Galton was introduced to the field by his half-cousin Charles Darwin, who was a friend of Faulds, and he went on to create the first scientific footing for the study (which assisted its acceptance by the courts) although Galton did not ever give credit that the original idea was not his.
In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (Finger Prints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints, 1893; and Fingerprint Directories, 1895), Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day. He described and classified them into eight broad categories: 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.

== Views ==
In 1873, Galton wrote a letter to The Times titled "Africa for the Chinese", where he argued that the Chinese, as a race capable of high civilisation and only temporarily stunted by the recent failures of Chinese dynasties, should be encouraged to immigrate to Africa and displace the inferior aboriginal blacks.
According to an editorial in Nature: "Galton also constructed a racial hierarchy, in which white people were considered superior. He wrote that the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own (the Anglo Saxon)." According to the Encyclopedia of Genocide, Galton bordered on the justification of genocide when he stated: "There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
In an effort to reach a wider audience, Galton worked on a novel entitled Kantsaywhere from May until December 1910. The novel described a utopia organised by a eugenic religion, designed to breed fitter and smarter humans. His unpublished notebooks show that this was an expansion of material he had been composing since at least 1901. He offered it to Methuen for publication, but they showed little enthusiasm. Galton wrote to his niece that it should be either "smothered or superseded". His niece appears to have burnt most of the novel, offended by the love scenes, but large fragments survived, and it was published online by University College, London.

== Personal life ==
In January 1853, Galton met Louisa Jane Butler (1822–1897); they married on 1 August 1853. Their marriage of 43 years ended with the death of Galton's wife. They had no children.

Galton, "On his own estimation he was a supremely intelligent man and felt that we should encourage the survival of the fittest." Later in life, Galton proposed a connection between genius and insanity based on his own experience:Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity. Attestations and descriptions of Galton's character were made by Beatrice Webb, James Arthur Harris, and Karl Pearson. He also corresponded with Beatrix Lucia Catherine Tollemache.
Galton is buried in the family tomb in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels, in the village of Claverdon, Warwickshire.

== Awards and influence ==

Over the course of his career Galton received many awards, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1910). He received in 1853 the Founder's Medal, the highest award of the Royal Geographical Society, for his explorations and map-making of southwest Africa. He was elected a member of the Athenaeum Club in 1855 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860. His autobiography also lists:

Silver Medal, French Geographical Society (1854)
Gold Medal of the Royal Society (1886)
Officier de l'Instruction Publique, France (1891)
D.C.L. Oxford (1894)
Sc.D. (Honorary), Cambridge (1895)
Huxley Medal, Royal Anthropological Institute (1901)
Elected Hon. Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge (1902)
Darwin Medal, Royal Society (1902)
Linnean Society of London's Darwin–Wallace Medal (1908)
Galton was knighted in 1909: