---
title: "History of eugenics"
chunk: 2/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:37.158532+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditary endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than viriculture which I once ventured to use.
In 1908, in Memories of my Life, Galton defined eugenics as "the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally", a definition agreed in consultation with a committee that included the biometrician Karl Pearson. It was slightly at odds with Galton's preferred definition, given in a lecture to the newly formed Sociological Society at the London School of Economics in 1904: "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage". The latter definition, which encompassed nurture and environment as well as heredity, was favoured by broadly left-wing, liberal elements of the ensuing ideological divide.
Galton's formulation of eugenics was based on a strong statistical approach, influenced heavily by Adolphe Quetelet's "social physics". Unlike Quetelet,  Galton did not exalt the "average man" but decried him as mediocre. Galton and his statistical heir Karl Pearson developed what was called the biometrical approach to eugenics, which developed new and complex statistical models (later exported to wholly different fields) to describe the heredity of traits. However, with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity, two separate camps of eugenics advocates emerged, one of statisticians, the other of biologists. Statisticians thought the biologists had exceptionally crude mathematical models, while biologists thought the statisticians knew little about biology.
Eugenics eventually referred to human selective reproduction with an intent to create children with desirable traits, generally through the approach of influencing differential birth rates. These policies were mostly divided into two categories: positive eugenics, the increased reproduction of those seen to have advantageous hereditary traits; and negative eugenics, the discouragement of reproduction by those with hereditary traits perceived as poor. Negative eugenic policies in the past have ranged from paying those deemed to have bad genes to voluntarily undergo sterilization, attempts at segregation, compulsory sterilization, and even genocide. Positive eugenic policies have typically taken the form of awards or bonuses for "fit" parents who have another child. Relatively innocuous practices such as marriage counseling had early links with eugenic ideology. Eugenics is superficially related to what later became known as Social Darwinism. While both claimed intelligence was hereditary, eugenics asserted new policies were needed to actively change the status quo towards a more "eugenic" state, while the Social Darwinists argued that society itself would naturally "check" the problem of "dysgenics" if no welfare policies were in place—for example, the poor might reproduce more but would have higher mortality rates.

=== Charles Davenport ===
Charles Davenport (1866–1944), a scientist from the United States, stands out as one of history's leading eugenicists. He took eugenics from a scientific idea to a worldwide movement implemented in many countries. Davenport obtained funding from the Carnegie Institution, to establish the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor in 1904 and the Eugenics Records Office in 1910, which provided the scientific basis for later Eugenic policies such as enforced sterilization. He was instrumental in building  the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations (IFEO) in 1925, and became its first president. While Davenport was located at Cold Spring Harbor and received money from the Carnegie Institute of Washington, the organization known as the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) started to become an embarrassment after the well-known debates between Davenport and Franz Boas. Davenport continued to occupy the same office and the same address at Cold Spring Harbor, but his organization now became known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, which currently retains the archives of the Eugenics Record Office. However, Davenport's racist views were not supported by all geneticists at Cold Spring Harbor, including H. J. Muller, Bentley Glass, and Esther Lederberg.
In 1932, Davenport welcomed Ernst Rüdin, a prominent Swiss eugenicist and race scientist, as his successor in the position of President of the IFEO.  Rüdin, director of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Institute for Psychiatry), a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute located in Munich, was a co-founder (with his brother-in-law Alfred Ploetz) of the German Society for Racial Hygiene. Ploetz recommended a "racial hygiene" system in which panels of physicians decided whether to grant individuals citizenship or euthanasia. Other prominent figures in eugenics who were associated with Davenport included Harry Laughlin (United States), Havelock Ellis (United Kingdom), Irving Fischer (United States), Eugen Fischer (Germany), Madison Grant (United States), Lucien Howe (United States), and Margaret Sanger (United States, founder of a New York health clinic that later became Planned Parenthood, and who commissioned the first birth control pill).

== In government policy ==

=== United Kingdom ===