"[C]haracter, including the aptitude for work, is heritable like every other faculty" -- Francis Galton, Memories of My Life
Galton was the founder of the statistical approach to heredity, now commonly called the "biometric approach", which was greatly extended and developed by Karl Pearson and his students at University College, London. He started with Darwin's theory of pangenesis.
Darwin had proposed that the mechanism of inheritance was "pangenesis", in which "gemmules" in bodily fluids mixed during mating. Galton proposed to test this by performing an ingenious series of experiments on rabbits, to see if blood transfusions would alter heritable characteristics. Darwin was enthusiastic, and corresponded extensively with Galton about the experiments. Galton was disappointed to discover that the transfusions did nothing of the sort, effectively disproving pangenesis. Darwin's reaction to Galton's published results was defensive, and he attempted to shore up his theory by a series of ad-hoc modifications (e.g. blood was no longer necessary for transmission of the "gemmules"), and reacted sharply in print. Galton, ever anxious to avoid controversy, published the following remarkable response, which indicates the depth of his regard for Darwin.
Like Mendel (also born in 1822) Galton experimented with the rearing of sweet peas, though Mendel's work was unknown at the time (it would only be rediscovered in 1900). This work and later research on the inheritance of height led to Galton's formulation of regression and correlation, and Galton's Law of Ancestral Heredity. Galton's statistical approach intrigued the mathematician Karl Pearson, who founded the biometric school with Galton and the biologist Weldon.
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| Letter | 1871 | Hereditary Success. | Times, The (December 9) | |
| Paper | 1872 | 'On blood-relationship.' | Nature 6 (June 27) : 173-6 | |
| Paper | 1872 | 'On blood-relationship.' | Proceedings of the Royal Society 20 (June 13) : 394-402 | |
| Paper | 1873 | Problem 4001: On the extinction of surnames. | Educational Times 1 (April) : 17 | |
| Paper | 1873 | 'On the causes which operate to create scientific men.' | Fortnightly Review 13 : 345-51 | |
| Paper | 1873 | 'Hereditary improvement.' | Fraser's Magazine 7 : 116-30 | |
| Paper | 1874 | On Men of Science: their Nature and Nurture. | Nature 9 (March 5) : 344-5 | |
| Paper | 1874 | 'On men of science, their nature and their nurture.' | Proceedings of the Royal Institution 7 : 227-36 | |
| Review | 1875 | [Review of Heredity; a Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes, and Consequences, Th. Ribot] | Academy, The (January 30) | |
| Paper | 1875 | 'A theory of heredity.' | Contemporary Review 27 : 80-95 | |
| Paper | 1875 | 'The history of twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture.' | Fraser's Magazine 12 : 566-76 | |
| Paper | 1875 | [Prefatory remarks to H. W. Watson, 'On the probability of the extinction of families' ] | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 4 : 138-9 | |
| Paper | 1875 | The history of twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture. | Nature 13 (November 18) : 59 | |
| Paper | 1876 | 'Short notes on heredity etc., in twins.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 : 324-9 | |
| Paper | 1876 | 'A theory of heredity.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 : 329-48 | |
| Paper | 1876 | 'The history of twins, as a criterion of the relative powers of nature and nurture.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5 : 391-406 | |
| Paper | 1876 | 'Théorie de l'hérédité'. | La Revue Scientifique 10 : 198-205 | |
| Paper | 1876 | Twins and fertility. | Live Stock Journal and Fanciers' Gazette, The 3 : 148 | |
| Paper | 1877 | 'Typical laws of heredity.' ('Les lois typiques de l'hérédité') | La Revue Scientifique 13 : 385-93 | |
| Paper | 1877 | Typical laws of heredity. | Nature 15 (April 5) : 492-5, 512-4, 532-3 | |
| Paper | 1877 | 'Typical laws of heredity.' | Proceedings of the Royal Institution 8 : 282-301 | |
| Paper | 1883 | [Discussion on 'Analysis of relationships of consanguinity and affinity', A. McFarlane] | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 12 : 61-2 | |
| Paper | 1883 | 'The American trotting-horse.' | Nature 28 (May 10) : 29 | |
| Letter | 1883 | 'Arithmetic notation of kinship.' [Letter] | Nature 28 : 435 | |
| Letter | 1884 | Record of Family Faculties.' [Letter] | Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 47 : 166 | |
| Paper | 1884 | Extracts from Family Records' | Nature 29 : 244 | |
| Paper | 1884 | Prize Records of Family Faculties. | Nature 30 : 82 | |
| Letter | 1884 | Family records. [Letter] | Times, The (January 9) : 10b | |
| Review | 1885 | 'Hereditary deafness.' [Review of 'Upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race', Alexander Bell] | Nature 31 : 269-70 | |
| Paper | 1885 | [Presidential address, Section H, Anthropology] | Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 55 : 1206-14 | |
| Paper | 1885 | 'Hereditary Types' | Science 6 (138, September 25) : 268-275 | |
| Paper | 1886 | 'Chance and its bearing in heredity.' | Birmingham Daily Post (December 7) | |
| Paper | 1886 | 'Regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15 : 246-63 | |
| Paper | 1886 | The origin of varieties. | Nature 34 (August 26) : 395-6 | |
| Letter | 1886 | 'Hereditary stature.' [Letter offering corrections] | Nature 33 : 317, | |
| Paper | 1886 | 'Family-likeness in eye-colour.' | Nature 34 (June 10) : 137 | |
| Paper | 1886 | Hereditary Stature. [Extracts from Presidential address to the Anthropological Institute.] | Nature 33 (January 28) : 295-8 | |
| Paper | 1886 | 'Family likeness in stature.' | Proceedings of the Royal Society 40 (January 21) : 42-63 | |
| Paper | 1886 | Family-likeness in eye-colour. | Proceedings of the Royal Society 40 (May 27) : 402-16 | |
| Paper | 1887 | 'Good and bad temper in English families.' | Fortnightly Review 42 : 21-30 | |
| Paper | 1887 | [On American Family Peculiarities in the Eighteenth Century, J. Boucher] | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 16 : 98-9 | |
| Paper | 1887 | 'Pedigree moth-breeding as a means of verifying certain important constants in the general theory of heredity.' | Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (1, April) : 19-34 | |
| Paper | 1889 | [Discussion on 'On a method of investigating the development of institutions applied to laws of marriage and descent', E. Tylor] | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 18 : 270 | |
| Paper | 1889 | 'Note on Australian marriage systems.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 18 : 70-2 | |
| Paper | 1889 | 'Human Variety' | Nature 39 : 296-7 | |
| Paper | 1889 | 'Feasible experiments on the possibility of transmitting acquired habits by means of inheritance.' | Nature 40 : 610 | |
| Paper | 1889 | 'Feasible experiments on the possibility of transmitting acquired habits by means of inheritance.' | Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 59 : 620-1 | |
| Letter | 1894 | 'Acquired characters.' [Letter] | Nature 51 : 56 | |
| Paper | 1895 | 'Questions bearing on specific stability.' | Nature 51 : 570-1 | |
| Paper | 1896 | 'Three generations of lunatic cats.' | Spectator (April 11) | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'Retrograde selection.' | Gardeners' Chronicle (May 15) | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'A new law of heredity.' | Nature 56 : 235-7 | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'Hereditary colour in horses.' | Nature 56 : 598-9 | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'Rate of racial change that accompanies different degrees of severity in selection.' | Nature 55 : 605-6 | |
| Review | 1897 | 'Relation between individual and racial variability.' [Unsigned review of 'A measure of variability and the relation of individual variation to specific differences', E. T. Brewster] | Nature 57 : 16-7 | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'The average contribution of each several ancestor to the total heritage of the offspring.' | Proceedings of the Royal Society 61 (June 3) : 401-13 | |
| Paper | 1897 | 'An examination into the registered speeds of American trotting horses, with remarks on their value as hereditary data.' | Proceedings of the Royal Society 62 (December 16) : 310-5 | |
| Paper | 1898 | An Examination into the Relative Speeds of American Trotting horses.' | Nature 58 : 333-334 | |
| Letter | 1898 | 'A diagram of heredity.' [Letter in] | Nature 57 : 292 | |
| Paper | 1898 | A diagram of heredity' | Nature 57 : 292 | |
| Letter | 1898 | 'The distribution of prepotency.' [Letter] | Nature 58 : 246-7 | |
| Letter | 1899 | 'A measure of the intensity of hereditary transmission.' [Letter] | Nature 60 : 29 | |
| Paper | 1899 | 'Pedigree stock records.' | Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 69 : 424-9 | |
| Paper | 1901 | 'On the probability that the son of a very highly-gifted father will be no less gifted.' | Nature 65 : 79 | |
| Paper | 1903 | 'Pedigrees, based on fraternal unities.' | Nature 67 : 586-7 | |
| Paper | 1904 | 'Average number of kinsfolk in each degree.' | Nature 70 : 529 | |
| Paper | 1904 | 'Distribution of successes and of natural ability among the kinsfolk of Fellows of the Royal Society.' | Nature 70 : 354-6 | |
| Paper | 1904 | Follow-up to 'Average number of kinsfolk in each degree.' | Nature : 626 | |
| Paper | 1904 | 'Nomenclature and tables of kinship.' | Nature 69 : 294-5 | |
| Letter | 1905 | Follow up to 'Average number of kinsfolk in each degree.' | Nature 71 : 248 | |
| Letter | 1905 | 'Nomenclature of kinship--its extension.' [Letter] | Nature 73 : 150-1 | |
| Letter | 1910 | Primogeniture and Heredity. | Times, The (March 21) : 13e | |
| Letter | 1910 | 'Alcoholism and offspring.' [Letter] | Times, The (June 3) | |
| Letter | 1910 | 'Heredity and tradition.' [Letter in] | Times, The (May 31) : 13c |