Historiometry measures the number of references to great people and discoveries in relatively neutral texts in an attempt to quantify human progress.

Sir Francis Galton popularized Historiometry in his 1869 work, Hereditary Genius.

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