Galton was a brilliant child, proficient in Latin and Greek when he was eight years old. Science, however, was his greatest interest, and by the age of fourteen, when he was sent to King Edward's School in Birmingham, he had grown tired of Latin and Greek and had begun to wish for what he felt was a more practical education. He says in his autobiography,
Memories of My Life (1908), "I had craved for what was denied, namely, an abundance of good English reading, well-taught mathematics, and solid science. Grammar and the dry rudiments of Latin and Greek were abhorrent to me, for there seemed so little sense in them."
Galton spent two years at King Edward's School before he began a medical apprenticeship in Birmingham, a position in which he was given great responsibilities, including those of setting broken bones and aiding in surgery. In 1839 he moved to London in order to obtain better theoretical instruction at King's College. In early 1840, as he was returning to London after visiting his family for Christmas, Galton met a Captain Sayers, who had traveled in Africa and recounted his adventures on the continent for Galton. Biographer D. W. Forrest finds that when Galton decided to begin exploring a decade later, his choice of Africa as his object "may have been determined by this chance meeting."
This passion to travel first struck Galton in the spring of 1840, and he persuaded his father to finance a summer trip to Germany for the ostensible purpose of studying under Baron Justus von Liebig, a famous chemist.
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