Memories of My Life

"... hardly any other living Englishman can point to so great an amount of truly scientific work applied to some of the fundamental problems of human welfare."
-G.E. Gehlke, Political Science Quarterly (1910)
In Memories of My Life (1908), Sir Francis Galton provided a detailed autobiography that starts with a description of his family of origin (he was a cousin of Charles Darwin), tells about his childhood, his education, and then describes each of his travels. Chapters are also devoted to his major scientific interests, including eugenics, which he regarded as a problem that might require state control. This autobiography offers a compelling insight into the life of one of the 19th century's leading scientists.

Among his many significant accomplishments, British scientist SIR FRANCIS GALTON (1822-1911) was an explorer, a geographer, a statistician, and inventor of fingerprint identification. In addition to more than 300 scientific papers, he wrote the books Hereditary Genius (1914), Finger Prints (1893), Memories of My Life (1908), and others.