SIR ALEXANDER CARR-SAUNDERS, BIOLOGIST AND EUGENICIST

                                                     By 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