Galton was a pioneer in the use of statistical methods as applied to biological problems. He was interested in the heredity of intelligence, and he used many statistical methods to attempt to correlate his views with the results he obtained from surveys of many different groups of people. Galton proved that a normal mixture of normal distributions is itself normal, and he also linked regression to normal distributions.

Francis Galton, who was cousin to the scientist Charles Darwin, was born to wealthy parents just outside Birmingham in England; this gave him the freedom to pursue his own areas of research. After schooling in Birmingham, Galton embarked on medical training, which was carried out by touring around Europe; this followed by further study at Birmingham and London. His studies were cut short by the death of his father in 1844. Galton became a member of the Royal Geographical Society and...