Galton used scientific inquiry to investigate what proponents of religion had long preached was the power of prayer. But Galton was the first to suggest that they could be the basis for a new science that he called dermatoglyphics – or “skin carvings.” Galton demonstrated that fingerprints are unique, stable over a lifetime, and could be classified and used to identify individuals who had left prints at the scene of a crime. Fortune tellers and others had long scrutinized the lines and creases on the palms and fingers, which had been described in general terms by scientists and physicians. Galton helped forge a new science of forensics. Scotland Yard detectives pore over fingerprints. He published the world’s first weather map in a newspaper, showing the reported weather in England on March 31, 1875. He developed instruments for measuring different weather parameters, described the use of barometric pressure in weather prediction, and devised systems for recording weather information. His 1863 book “ Meteorographica” was the first to describe weather on a continental scale. Galton was a pioneer in meteorology, the study of weather. My interest in Galton was renewed through my university’s decision to remove from buildings the name of one of its past presidents – David Starr Jordan – who also happened to be a eugenicist. He made seminal contributions in fields as diverse as statistics, geology, meteorology, anthropology, psychology, biology and psychometrics. While Galton is primarily remembered today, 110 years after his death, as the father of the shameful pseudoscience of eugenics, during his life he was considered one of the most influential thinkers of his day. and Nazi “racial hygiene” programs and the Holocaust.
It laid the groundwork for forced sterilization laws in the U.S. The idea of scientist Francis Galton, eugenics suggested that negative traits could be bred out of the human species by discouraging reproduction by those considered inferior. These are just a few examples of the influence of eugenics in the early 20th century. A popular pseudoscience was leaving its mark on American culture a century ago in everything from massive reductions in quotas for immigration to the U.S., to thousands of “ fitter family” contests at county fairs, to a growing acceptance of birth control by those who thought it could curtail the fertility of “undesirables.”
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