Francis Galton Biography

Michael A. Scheller
Professor Rebecca Quimby
HUM - 2235
10 July 2014

Sir Francis Galton: A Pioneer in Fingerprint Identification & Biometry
“Sir Francis Galton laid the foundations on which are based the fingerprint systems employed today by police forces throughout the world.”
D.G. Browne and A. Brock, Fingerprints: Fifty Years of Scientific Crime Detection, 1954
This research paper will discuss the life and career of the renowned forensic scientist Sir Francis Galton, one of the Victorian Age’s most eccentric and prolific scientific minds. This will discuss his early life in Birmingham, England, his formal education in London, his scientific training and discoveries, his enduring legacy in the study of fingerprinting and eugenics,
Being a relative of Darwin, Francis Galton spent much of his life dedicated to research and critical inquiries into several different subject areas, from exploration to eugenics to weather to fingerprints. He researched the implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution, focusing on human genius and selective mating (A&E Televison Networks). At an early age, Galton had planned to become a doctor. He studied medicine at Birmingham’s General Hospital and at King’s College in London in the late 1830s. But he abandoned this idea and went on to study mathematics at Cambridge University. After his father’s death in 1844, Galton inherited a large fortune, which allowed him to pursue whatever aroused his curiosity, starting with his interest in world exploration. In the mid-1840s, Galton made his first trip to the Middle East and Africa. He went to Egypt and traveled down the Nile River to the Sudan. It was with these travels that motivated him to embark on a long journey that started in southern Africa in 1850 (A&E Televison
Galton’s most unusual legacy can be seen every week on the televison show C.S.I. and other crime shows. He pointed out that fingerprints were very likely unique and thus could be used for identification or the linking of a suspect to a crime scene (Henderson 8). This idea or type of thinking was very progressive, and why undoubtedly he is is considered a genius and a pioneer, way ahead of his time when it comes to the study of fingerprint identification and Forensic Science. This is my main reason why I decided to choose him as my subject for this research paper. Like Galton himself, I am intrigued and fascinated by fingerprints, which is why I am studying and learning about Crime Scene Investigation here at Edison State College, or now as it is formally known, Florida Southwestern State College. Francis Galton became absorbed with the use of fingerprinting in becoming a method of personal identification, publishing several major papers & books on the subject (e.g., Finger Prints, 1892; Finger Print Directories, 1895). He used his Anthropometric Laboratory to gather many prints, developing a highly sophisticated system for classifying fingerprints, much of which are still in