Charles Davenport

For the maker of railroad passenger cars, see Charles Davenport (manufacturer).
Charles Davenport

Charles B. Davenport at a 1921 eugenics conference
Born June 1, 1866(1866-06-01)
Stamford, Connecticut
Died February 18, 1944(1944-02-18) (aged 77)
Nationality American
Fields eugenicist and biologist
Institutions Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866–February 18, 1944) was a prominent American eugenicist and biologist. He was one of the leaders of the American eugenics movement, which was directly involved in the sterilization of around 60,000 "unfit" Americans and strongly influenced the Holocaust in Europe.[1]

Contents

Biography

Davenport was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Amzi Benedict Davenport, an abolitionist of puritan stock, and his wife Jane Joralemon Dimon (of English, Dutch and Italian ancestry). He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in biology in 1892 and married Gertrude Crotty, a zoology graduate, in 1894.

Later on, Davenport became a professor of zoology at Harvard. He became one of the most prominent American biologists of his time, pioneering new quantitative standards of taxonomy. Davenport had a tremendous respect for the biometric approach to evolution pioneered by Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, and was involved in Pearson's journal, Biometrika. However, after the re-discovery of Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity, he moved on to become a prominent supporter of Mendelism.

In 1898, Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory[2], where he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. He began to study human heredity, and much of his effort was later turned to promoting eugenics.[3] His 1911 book, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, was used as a college textbook for many years. The year after it was published Davenport was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Davenport founded the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations (IFEO) in 1925, with Eugen Fischer as chairman of the Commission on Bastardization and Miscegenation (1927). Davenport aspired to found a World Institute for Miscegenations, and "was working on a 'world map' of the 'mixed-race areas[4], which he introduced for the first time at a meeting of the IFEO in Munich in 1928."[5]

Together with his assistant Morris Steggerda, Davenport attempted to develop a comprehensive quantitative approach to human miscegenation. The results of their research was presented in the book Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), which attempted to provide statistical evidence for biological and cultural degradation following interbreeding between white and black populations. Today it is considered a work of scientific racism, and was criticized in its time for drawing conclusions which stretched far beyond (and sometimes counter to) the data it presented.[6] The entire eugenics movement was criticized for being supposedly based on racist and classist assumptions set out to prove the unfitness of wide sections of the American population which Davenport and his followers considered "degenerate", using methods criticized even by British eugenicists as unscientific.[7]

After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Davenport maintained connections with various Nazi institutions and publications, both before and during World War II. For example, Davenport held editorial positions at two influential German journals, both of which were founded in 1935, and in 1939 he wrote a contribution to the Festschrift for Otto Reche, who became an important figure in the plan to "remove" those populations considered "inferior" in eastern Germany.[8] Davenport did not approve of the Nazi government, however, in 1938 using Joseph Goebbels as an example of crippled statesmen who, motivated by their physical defects, have "led revolutions and aspired to dictatorships while burdening their country with heavy taxes and reducing its finances to chaos."[9] He died of pneumonia in 1944.

Eugenics creed

As quoted in the NAS Biographical Memoir of Charles Benedict Davenport by Oscar Riddle, the Eugenics creed is as follows:

References

  1. ^ Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, p 293 et seq
  2. ^ "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory". History. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 2010. http://www.cshl.edu/About-Us/History/. Retrieved 19 March 2011. 
  3. ^ Davenport, CB (1921). "RESEARCH IN EUGENICS.". Science 54 (1400): pp. 391–397. 1921 Oct 28. doi:10.1126/science.54.1400.391. PMID 17735069 
  4. ^ Kühl, Stefan, "Die Internationale der Rassisten." Aufstieg und Niedergang der internationalen Bewegung für Eugenik und rassenhygiene im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/Main 1997, p. 81.
  5. ^ Hans-Walter Schmul, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", Springer Science+Business Media, 2008, p.115.
  6. ^ Aaron Gillette, Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 123-24.
  7. ^ Black, War Against the Weak, p. 99.
  8. ^ Kuhl, S. "The Nazi Connection; Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism" (New York, Oxford UP, 1994).
  9. ^ "Letters to the Editor". Life: pp. 2. 1938-06-13. http://books.google.com/books?id=Zk8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA2&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=true. Retrieved December 10, 2011. 

Selected works

1891-1900

1906

1907

1908

1909

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915

1916

1917

1919

1920

1921

1923

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1934

1935

1937

1938

1939

1940

1944

Further reading

External links

See also