Sir Francis Galton (* 16. Februar 1822 in Sparkbrook, Birmingham; † 17. Januar 1911 in Haslemere, Surrey) war ein britischer Naturforscher und Schriftsteller.

Er war ein Vetter von Charles Darwin und arbeitete unter anderem wie dieser an der Vererbungslehre. In der Auseinandersetzung mit der Vererbungslehre prägte er u.a. auch den Begriff Eugenik. Sein Ziel sei die "Verbesserung der menschlichen Rasse" gewesen, so sein Freund Karl Pearson. Maßgebliches Interesse galt dabei der Vererbung des Talents. Seine Auseinandersetzung mit den dabei auftretenden statistischen Verteilungen führte ihn zur Erfindung des Galtonbretts. Zudem 'erfand' er den ersten Korrelationskoeffizienten. Außerdem entwickelte er die Galtonpfeife, ein Instrument zur Erzeugung extrem hoher Töne. Generell verwendete Galton seine Methoden, um Urteile über die Fähigkeiten unterschiedlicher "Rassen" zu fällen, was jedoch mit den damals herrschenden Rassenvorurteilen übereinstimmte. Trotz der Tatsache, dass einige von Galtons Arbeiten u.a. von Gregor Mendel widerlegt wurden und der Begriff Eugenik mißbraucht werden konnte (und auch wurde), handelt es sich um einen bedeutenden Wissenschaftler. Galton gilt zudem als Vater der Verhaltensgenetik.

Er bereiste den Balkan, Ägypten, den Sudan und - zusammen mit dem schwedischen Forscher Charles John Andersson - von 1850 bis 1853 den Südwesten Afrikas und verfasste Reiseberichte über diese Expeditionen.Francis Galton erkannte die Möglichkeit mit Hilfe von Fingerabdrücken Personen zu identifizieren. Auch die Erfindung der Wetterkarte wird ihm zugeschrieben.

Schriften

1865 "On spectacles for divers and on the vision of amphibious animals", British Association for the Advancement of Science Report 35 (1865), 10-11 [Tankard 39].
1865 "On stereoscopic maps, taken from models of mountainous countries", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 35 (1865), 99-104 [Tankard 39].
1865 "On stereoscopic maps, taken from models of mountainous countries", (Summary) Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 9 (1865), 104-105 [Tankard 39].
1865 "Heredity talent and character", Macmillan's Magazine (Cambridge) 12 (1865), 157-166 & 318-327 [Hilts, 314, 317, 330, 331, 334, 335, 336, 337; Tankard 45; Porter 134].
1866 "On the error in the usual method of obtaining meterorological statistics", British Association for the Advancement of Science Report 36 (1866), 16-17.
1866 "On the conversion of wind-charts into passage-charts", British Association for the Advancement of Science Report 36 (1866), 17-20.
1870 "Barometric predictions of weather", British Association for the Advancement of Science Report 40 (1870), 31-33 [Tankard 54; Porter 278].1871 "Experiments in pangenesis by breeding from rabbits of a pure variety, into whose circulation blood taken from other varieties had previously been largely transfused", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 19 (1871), 393-410 [Hilts 451].
1872 "Statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer", Fortnightly Review 12 (1872), 125-135 [Tankard 54; Porter 137].
1873 "Hereditary improvement", Fraser's Magazine 7 (1873), 116-130 [Hilts, 359, 360; Porter 130].1873 "The relative supplies from town and country families, to the population of future generations", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 36 (1873), 19-26 [Hilts, 363, 364].
1873 "On the causes which operate to create scientific men", Fortnightly Review 13, N.S., (1873), 345-351 [Hilts 383].1874 "On Men of science, their nature and nurture", Proceedings of the Meetings of members of the Royal Institution 7 (1874), 227-236 [Hilts 399].
1874 "On a proposed statistical scale", Nature 9 (1874), 342-3 [Stigler 271].1874 "Proposal to apply for anthropological statistics from schools", Journal of the Anthopological Institute 3 (1874), 308-311 [Hilts 364].
1874 [Prefaratory remarks to 'On the probability of extinction of families' by H.W. Watson], Journal of the Anthropological Institute 4 (1874), 138-9.
1875 "Statistics by intercomparison with remarks on the laws of frequency of error", Philosophical Magazine [4] 49 (1875), 33-46 [Porter 142, 144; Stigler 270, 271, 274, 275].
1875 "The history of twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture", Fraser's Magazine 92 (1875), 566-576 [Tankard 54].
1875 "The history of twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture" (Revised edition) Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 (1875), 391-406 [Tankard 54].
1875 "A theory of heredity", Contemporary Review 27 (1875), 80-95 [Hilts 440, 449, 452, 453, 454, 455].
1875 "A theory of heredity" (Revised version), Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 (1875), 329-348 [Hilts 440, 449, 452, 453, 454, 455].
1875 "On the height and weight of boys aged 14, in town and country public schools", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 (1875), 174-180 [Hilts 365, 373, 374].
1877 "Typical laws of heredity", Proceedings of the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 8 (1877) 282-301 [Hilts 457, 461,462, 463, 485, 486; Stigler 280, 281, 282].
1877 "Considerations adverse to the maintenace of Section F ...", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 40 (1877), 468-473 [Porter 136].
1877 "Address to the department of anthropology Section H", British Association for the Advancement of Science Report (1877), 94-100 [Hilts 390, 392, 427].
1878 "Composite portraits ...", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 8 (1878), 132-148 [Porter 140, 272].
1879 "Generic images", Nineteenth Century 6 (1879) 157-169 [Hilts 413].
1879 "The geometric mean, in vital and social statistics", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 29 (1879), 365-7 [Stigler 330].
1880 "Mental imagery", Fortnightly Review 28, N.S. (1880), 312-324 [Porter 143].
1884 "Measurement of character", Fortnightly Review 36, N.S., (1884), 179-182 [Hilts 435].
1885 "The measure of fidget", Nature 32 (1885), 174-5 [Tankard 40].
1885 "On the anthropometric laboratory at the late International Health Exhibition", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 14 (1885), 205-218 [Hilts 430].
1885 [Address as President of Section H: Anthropology], British Association for the Advancement of Science Report 55 (1885), 1206-1214 [Hilts 351, 464, 465, 490; Stigler 283, 289, 296].
1886 "Regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15 (1886), 246-263 [Stigler 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 295, 296; Tankard 52, 53].
1886 "President's address", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15 (1886), 489-499 [Hilts 467; Tankard -; Porter 146].
1886 "Family likeness in stature, with an appendix by J D Hamilton Dickson", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 40 (1886), 42-73 [Tankard 50, 51, 67; Porter 272; Stigler 290, 292, 293, 379].
1888 "Co-relations and their measurement, chiefly from anthropometric data", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 45 (1888), 135-145 [Hilts 491; Tankard 51, 52; Stigler 297, 319, 320].
1889 "President's address", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 18 (1889), 401-419 [Porter 129, 145].
1889 "Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, January 1889", Journal of the Anthropological Institute 18 (1889), 401-419 [Hilts, 491, 494, 496].
1889 "The sacrifice of education to examination", Nineteenth Century 25 (1889), 303-308.
1890 "Kinship and correlation", North American Review 150 (1890), 419-431. Reprinted in Statistical Science 4 (1989), 81-86 [Stigler 298, 299; not listed by Forrest].
1890 "Criminal anthropology" (Review of "The Criminal" by Havelock Ellis), Nature 42 (1890), 75-76 [Hilts 393].
1891 "Useful anthropometry", Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education 6 (1891) [Porter 313; not listed by Forrest].
1893 "The just-perceptible difference", Proceedings of the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 14 (1893), 13-26 [Porter 271].
1894 "Psychology of mental arithmeticians and blindfold chess-players", Nature 51 (1894), 73-74 [Hilts 419].
1896 "Intelligible signals between neighbouring stars", Fortnightly Review 60 (1896), 657-664 [Tankard 39].
1896 "Applications of the method of percentiles to Mr. Yule's data on the distribution of pauperism", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 59 (1896), 392-6 [Stigler 346; not listed by Forrest].
1897 "The average contribution of each several ancestors to the total heritage of the offspring", Proccedings of the Royal Society of London 61 (1897), 401-413 [Hilts 474].
1898 "A diagram of heredity", Nature 57 (1898), 293.
1899 "A geometric determination of the median value of a system of normal variants, from two of its centiles", Nature 61 (1899), 102-4 [Tankard -].
1901 "Biometry", Biometrika 1 (1901), 7-10 [Tankard 79].
1905 "Number of strokes of the brush in a picture", Nature 72 (1905), 198 [Tankard 40].
1906 "Cutting a round cake on scientific principles", Nature 75 (1906), 173 [Tankard -].