Honours and Impact
Over the course of his career Galton received many major awards, including the Copley medal of the Royal Society (1910). He received in 1853 the highest award from the Royal Geographical Society, one of two gold medals awarded that year, for his explorations and map-making of southwest Africa. He was elected a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Club in 1855 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860. His autobiography also lists the following:
- Silver Medal, French Geographical Society (1854)
- Gold Medal of the Royal Society (1886)
- Officier de l'Instruction Publique, France (1891)
- D.C.L. Oxford (1894)
- Sc.D. (Honorary), Cambridge (1895)
- Huxley Medal, Anthropological Institute (1901)
- Elected Hon. Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge (1902)
- Darwin Medal, Royal Society (1902)
- Linnean Society of London's Darwin–Wallace Medal (1908)
Galton was knighted in 1909. His statistical heir Karl Pearson, first holder of the Galton Chair of Eugenics at University College London (now Galton Chair of Genetics), wrote a three-volume biography of Galton, in four parts, after his death (Pearson 1914, 1924, 1930). The eminent psychometrician Lewis Terman estimated that his childhood IQ was on the order of 200, based on the fact that he consistently performed mentally at roughly twice his chronological age (Forrest 1974). (This follows the original definition of IQ as mental age divided by chronological age, rather than the modern distribution-deviate definition.)
The flowering plant genus Galtonia was named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Francis Galton
Famous quotes containing the words honours and/or impact:
“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)