Historiometry

Historiometry is the historical study of human progress or individual personal characteristics, using statistics to analyze references to geniuses, their statements, behavior and discoveries in relatively neutral texts. Historiometry combines techniques from cliometrics, which studies the history of economics and from psychometrics, the psychological study of an individual's personality and abilities.

Historiometry started in the early 19th century with studies on the relationship between age and achievement by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in the careers of prominent French and English playwrights but it was Sir Francis Galton, a pioneering English eugenist who popularized historiometry in his 1869 work, Hereditary Genius. It was further developed by Frederick Adams Woods (who coined the term historiometry) in the beginning of the 20th century. Also psychologist Paul E. Meehl published several papers on historiometry later in his career, mainly in the area of medical history, although it is usually referred to as cliometric metatheory by him.

Historiometry was the first field studying genius by using scientific methods.

Prominent current historiometry researchers include Dean Keith Simonton and Charles Murray.

Historiometry is defined by Dean Keith Simonton as: a quantitative method of statistical analysis for retrospective data. In Simonton's work the raw data comes from psychometric assessment of famous personalities, often already deceased, in an attempt to assess creativity, genius and talent development.

...
Wikipedia