Author of the book 'Hereditary Genius' is :

Concept

Identifying who wrote a particular work means matching the work's subject matter and title to the scholar most closely associated with that specific line of research — early psychologists each built a distinct, well-documented body of work, so the correct author is the one whose signature contribution matches the named title.

Application

'Hereditary Genius' (1869) is the landmark work of Sir Francis Galton, in which he traced the family trees of judges, statesmen, scientists, and other eminent men across generations and used statistical analysis to argue that exceptional ability ('genius') runs in families and is substantially inherited. This book is widely credited as a founding text of differential psychology and psychometrics, and it directly inspired Galton's later coinage of the term 'eugenics'.

Cross-check

• Elizabeth B. Hurlock — remembered chiefly for developmental-psychology textbooks that map the stages of growth across childhood and adolescence, not for heredity-of-ability research.

• Robert S. Woodworth — associated with 'Dynamic Psychology' and the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model explaining the internal drives behind behaviour, a separate line of work from genealogical studies of genius.

• Edward A. Ross — a founding figure of American sociology, known for 'Social Psychology' (1908) and studies of social control and imitation, not for family-lineage studies of intellectual ability.

Because 'Hereditary Genius' is specifically Galton's genealogical, statistics-based study of inherited ability, the correct author is Galton.