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.
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…
Lyndsay Andrew Farrall’s PhD dissertation on “The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement, 1865-1925” (Indiana University) is an important source of information about the history of eugenics at University of London, University College. More…
In September 2019 I gave a paper, “Eugenics, Karl Pearson, and the Legacy of Anglo-Saxon Nativism at UCL,” at a conference organised by the Research Group on University History held at the University of Manchester. More…
In the course of my own research into activities that led to something like a “Department of Eugenics” at University College London (UCL) , I returned over and again to one work: “The origins and More…
I was reading Angelique Richardson’s 2014 TLS piece on the history of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 (UK), which came into effect 1914 and was repealed in 1968. It inspired me to review that Act More…
Francis Galton’s Will left money to University of London “for establishment and endowment of a Professorship” related to eugenics. This blog gives the text of the original donation. More…
In October 2014, I proposed to UCL that it change the name of a lecture theatre named for Francis Galton. That letter is here. More…
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