Eugenics includes a wide range of programmes to manage the hereditary contribution of individuals to the next general. Some approaches focused on individuals and pedigrees. Others focused on statistics and census information. Eugenics programmes always were controversial in the places and periods they were proposed. They were widely understood to be overtly and covertly discriminatory. Eugenics campaigns didn’t need science, but some deployed science to make their arguments seem stronger (and some scientists took central roles in these campaigns because they thought science would improve the campaigns). The relationship between eugenics and scientists is a subject of significant research.
This is the text of a presentation I delivered in September 2019 titled, “Eugenics, Karl Pearson and the Legacy of Anglo-Saxon Nativism”. It was for the conference “Universities and their contested pasts”. At the time, the UCL More…
The “eugenics tree” is one of the most reprinted images associated with the history of the subject. The source is Laughlin (1923: 15, figure 3). It was used at the Second International Congress of Eugenics (September More…
Because I’ve been vocal in arguing for de-naming UCL facilities once (but no longer) associated with racist, nativist, eugenicists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, I was asked if UCL should de-name its Petrie Museum of More…
It’s been a long road. UCL has announced the official decision to remove the names of Francis Galton and Karl Pearson from its estate. De-named will be the Galton Lecture Theatre, Pearson Lecture Theatre, and More…
Francis Galton created a Eugenics Record Office (ERO-Galton) at 88 Gower Street, London, England, in 1904, while developing a scheme to create for himself some research capacity in this area. ERO-Galton operated until 1907, when More…
Colleagues at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) have developed a course to explore the history and legacy of eugenics in their community. This draws on an interdisciplinary team of tutors and some highly energetic students. More…
The subject of eugenics is back on the agenda for historians of science. I’ve been involved in the UCL Inquiry on the history and legacies of eugenics within that institution. My academic department has reviewed More…
In 1914, Journal of Heredity published a directory of US colleges and universities with eugenics courses. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives a good indication of the range of institutions which supported More…
Did Professor Karl Pearson praise Hitler and Nazi ‘race hygiene’ programmes? Yes, he did. He did this in 1934, at a dinner to mark his retirement the previous year from University College London (UCL). Pearson More…
Eugenics combined science and politics to create social policies intent on “improving the stock” of some human groups at the expense of others. This module investigates eugenics as a history of science and technology operating More…
Copyright 2020 Professor Joe Cain
