SIR ALEXANDER CARR-SAUNDERS, BIOLOGIST AND EUGENICIST

                                                     By Scott Forster and Tom Leonard
                       


                                                             

                                               SIR ALEXANDER CARR-SAUNDERS

After the Armistice he returned to the Zoology department of Oxford University, taking an interest in ecological issues, especially population and overpopulation. He participated in one of the firsts Oxford Expeditions to Spitsbergen in the Arctic in 1921 as main scientists, together with Julian Huxley. During the expedition he distilled his early ideas on population dynamics and summarized them in a book called The Population Problem. The book used a neo-Malthusian argument plus Galton's eugenics as the theoretical framework for a quantitative analysis of population dynamics. The population problem arose -according to Carr-Saunders analysis- from the fact of having high reproductive rates among primitive people with low mental and physical qualities. Over-population of these lower races endangered the standard of living of races bearing higher qualities. Unlike Malthus, he thought that industrial productivity and not food was the main limiting factor in human populations


                        THE FORSTER-LEONARD ARCHIVES ON GALTONIAN EUGENICS


                                                       TO BE CONTINUED

CARLOS BLAKER PSYCHIATRIST AND EUGENICIST

                                                   By Scott Forster and Tom Leonard


                                                                           

                    Carlos Paton Blacker MC GM FRCP (8 December 1895 – 21 April 1975^[1]), also known as C. P. Blacker, was an eminent war hero, psychiatrist and eugenicist who worked with R.A. Fisher and Lionel Penrose                               

                                                          CARLOS BLAKER


From 1931 to 1952, Blacker was secretary of the Eugenics Society and he gave it a new focus on birth control and population planning. [1]. His appointment as Secretary was "not without some misgivings of [Leonard] Darwin, its chairman. The differences in outlook, aspirations and in judgement of these two men during their partnership in office in the Eugenics Society led to tensions which have been ably traced by Richard Soloway. Two prominent issues here were Darwin's reluctance to endorse Blacker's deep-rooted conviction that research and provision of contraception should be a major feature in the Eugenic Society's strategy to reduce the fecundity of the lower, less able classes and his disagreement with Blacker's aspiration to redirect more of the Eugenic Society's effort from education and propaganda to research and promotion of contraception."


                        THE FORSTER_LEONARD ARCHIVES ON GALTONIAN EUGENICS


                                      TO BE CONTINUED

Francis Crew, Animal Geneticist and Human Eugenicist

                                        by Scott Forster and Tom  Leonard                       

                                                               

                                                                     Francis Crew

Francis Albert Eley Crew FRS FRSE LLD (2 March 1886 – 26 May 1973) was an English animal geneticist. He was a pioneer in his field leading to the University of Edinburgh’s place as a world leader in the science of animal genetics. He was the first Director of the Institute of Animal Breeding and the first Professor of Animal Genetics. He is said to have laid the foundations of medical genetics.^[1]


1957 Eugenics Society Membership.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973698/pdf/eugenrev00039-0001a.pdf


CREW, PROF. F. A. E., M.D., D.Sc., M.R.C.P., F.R.S., F.R.S.E., Usher Institute, Warrender Park Road,
Edinburgh, 9..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Albert_Eley_Crew

SEE           EUGENICS IN EDINBURGH

According to Cristina Moreno Lozano & Henry Dee, in their 2020 article,

Genetics, Eugenics and Colonial Science at Edinburgh University during the Interwar Period

A member of the Eugenics Society from 1919, Crew was also heavily involved in the development of eugenics in Britain. He hoped to organise both a Eugenics Society branch and a eugenics lectureship at Edinburgh.¹ As a “citizen”, “biologist” and “eugenist”, he rejected the “biological predestination” of Social Darwinism (which was increasingly seen as out-dated after WWI). Instead - quoting the father of eugenics, Francis Galton - he was

convinced that the greatest of ‘the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally,’ is that of the social inheritance, an environmental factor consisting of all the gains of progress in the evolution of society, and acquired by the individuals of each generation through the medium of the mind during education.²

1 P.M.Z. Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, its source and its critics in Britain, pp.151-152.

2 F.A.E. Crew, ‘A Biologist in a New Environment’, Eugenics Review, 11 (1919)

                                  Henry Dee's Research.
                                  Henry Dee's The Republic
                                  I am a bad native




More about Francis Crew:
VENEREAL  DISEASES AND THE REFORM ENIGMA

MUTATION TO MEDICINE

DOING MEDICINE TOGETHER

BIOGRAPHY BY LANCELOT HOGBEN