Genetique

1889 · rif. 64520 — London UK: Macmillan and Co. 1889. 8vo. ix 5 259 1 pp. plus 2 pp. publisher’s ads including the inserted unpaginated errata leaf. With diagrams text figures tables. Plum-coloured publisher’s cloth gilt lettering on spine edgewear rubbing minor soiling to covers slightly cocked still G- copy from the library of Elof Axel Carlson 1931-2025 noted geneticist historian of science and fierce opponent of eugenics and J.H. Rickes. First edition of this first major statistical and biometric study of biological variation which established foundational concepts like regression to the mean and the law of ancestral heredity that shaped quantitative genetics. Galton was a pioneer in forensic science heredity and more fields and half-cousin to Charles Darwin whose studies on inheritance of certain traits such as the hereditary nature of later served as the basis of behavioral genetics or eugenics which later was used to justify compulsory sterilization programs across the United States and by Nazi Germany for mass extermination. Garrison & Morton 233. Macmillan and Co., hardcover