GALTON, FRANCIS. – Born in Duddeston on 16 February 1822 and died in Heslemere on 17 January 1911.
Cousin of Darwin, and a naturalist and statistician of great merit. He discovered the law of “filial regression” and that of “ancestral heredity,” laws that enjoyed wide resonance until the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws. He continued the work of Quételot and, together with his student Pearson, is considered the founder of biometry. Of great importance was his concept of measuring the correlation between quantitative traits.
BIBL.: Memory of my life, London 1908; K. Pearson, The life, letters and labours of F. G., there 1921. Giorgio M. Baffoni