Francis Galton
British scientist (1822–1911) and cousin of Charles Darwin who founded eugenics, the pseudo-scientific program of 'improving' human populations through selective breeding that became the intellectual foundation for Nazi racial policy.
Galton took Darwin's evolutionary theory and applied it to human society in the most dangerous possible way. His reasoning: natural selection operates slowly and randomly; surely we can direct it intentionally, breeding favorable traits and eliminating unfavorable ones. He coined the term 'eugenics' (from Greek: 'good birth') in 1883 and spent his career trying to make it scientifically respectable.
The failures of his science are now obvious: the traits Galton wanted to cultivate (intelligence, character, industriousness) are not simply heritable; his measurement methods were crude and biased; his definition of 'favorable' traits precisely tracked the prejudices of Victorian English upper-class men. What looked like science was class prejudice and ethnic chauvinism wearing scientific language.
The consequences were devastating. By the 1920s, eugenics programs had been adopted in the US (forced sterilization of 'mental defectives'), Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. The Nazi racial hygiene program, which murdered millions, was the logical endpoint of policies that Galton and American eugenicists had pioneered. Galton died in 1911, before the full horror of his intellectual legacy was apparent.
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What is eugenics? ＋
The pseudo-scientific program of improving human populations through selective breeding, encouraging reproduction among those deemed 'fit' while preventing it among those deemed 'unfit.' Founded by Francis Galton, adopted by the US and Nazi Germany, it led to forced sterilizations and genocide.
How did eugenics lead to the Holocaust? ＋
US eugenics programs (1910s-30s), forced sterilizations, immigration restrictions targeting 'inferior races', provided the intellectual and legal precedents that Nazi racial hygienists explicitly cited. Hitler praised American eugenics; the Nuremberg Laws directly modeled US miscegenation laws.