Prolegomena to a history of radical brains in the nineteenth century: physiognomics, phrenology, brain anatomy.

This paper deals with the coming into being of skulls and brains of geniuses as objects of scientific investigation. Late-eighteenth-century physiognomics and physical anthropology established parameters for explaining intellectual differences among human beings. These were refined and modified by phrenology. Although phrenology was contested, its methods for investigating the brains of geniuses presaged the beginnings of modern elite brain research in the 1850's. In this decade, the older interest in brains and skulls of geniuses, which was part of the hagiography of celebrated persons, was transformed into a systematic and comparative exploration of radical brains.