Francis Galton by Michael Bulmer, Johns Hopkins University Press, $45, ISBN 0801874033 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
FRANCIS Galton, discoverer of the uniqueness of fingerprints, is remembered mostly for his development of eugenics, the “improvement” of the human race by selective breeding. This idea was distorted and used as a pretext for massacre by the Nazis in Germany, but Galton himself acted from the highest possible motives. He was the first to carry out statistical analysis of the study of inheritance. His early adventurous life is cursorily treated here and you’ll need a lively interest in statistics to progress through most…
