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Extreme Measures The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton

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Extreme Measures The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton

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by Martin Brookes

Bloomsbury $230

Sir Francis Galton is not the best known of the great Victorian polymaths, but he's one of the most fascinating and controversial. The scale and diversity of his accomplishments, and the sheer volume of research he generated, are overwhelming to 21st-century micro-specialists.

After a brief first chapter or two weighed down with details of family lineage, Martin Brookes avoids the pitfall of dry historical biography to bring vividly to life a captivating genius whose brain worked so hard and fast that he often complained his head was overheating.

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Some of the achievements for which Galton is not particularly renowned are: pioneering exploration of large, wild tracts of what is today Namibia; the invention of the barometric weather map; and the development of forensic fingerprinting. He discovered the fundamental statistical tools of linear regression and correlation, founded the scientific discipline of differential psychology, and brought major advances to anthropology.

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