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books
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A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics
By (author) Nicholas Wright Gillham
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normal price: R 1,272.95
Price: R 1,209.95
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| book description |
Few scientists have made lasting contributions to as many fields as Francis Galton. He was an important African explorer, travel writer, and geographer. He was the meteorologist who discovered the anticyclone, a pioneer in using fingerprints to identify individuals, the inventor of regression and correlation analysis in statistics, and the founder of the eugenics movement. Now, Nicholas Gillham paints an engaging portrait of this Victorian polymath. The book traces Galton's ancestry (he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and the cousin of Charles Darwin), upbringing, training as a medical apprentice, and experience as a Cambridge undergraduate. It recounts in colorful detail Galton's adventures as leader of his own expedition in Namibia. Darwin was always a strong influence on his cousin and a turning point in Galton's life was the publication of the Origin of Species. Thereafter, Galton devoted most of his life to human heredity, using then novel methods such as pedigree analysis and twin studies to argue that talent and character were inherited and that humans could be selectively bred to enhance these qualities. To this end, he founded the eugenics movement which rapidly gained momentum early in the last century. After Galton's death, however, eugenics took a more sinister path, as in the United States, where by 1913 sixteen states had involuntary sterilization laws, and in Germany, where the goal of racial purity was pushed to its horrific limit in the ""final solution."" Galton himself, Gillham writes, would have been appalled by the extremes to which eugenics was carried. Here then is a vibrant biography of a remarkable scientist as well as a superb portrait of science in the Victorian era.
| product details |
Normally shipped |
Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc
Published date | 3 Jan 2002
Language |
Format | Hardback
Pages | 432
Dimensions | 243 x 164 x 36mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 771g
ISBN | 978-0-1951-4365-2
Readership Age |
BISAC | science / history
| other options |
Normally shipped |
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 2,500.95
Price | R 2,375.95
| on special |
Out of Print / Publication Cancelled
Normally shipped |
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 3,696.95
Price | R 3,511.95
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