Charles Benedict Davenport

Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944) was one of America's most prominent eugenicists and biologists. He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in Biology in 1892, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1912. A personal friend and devoted follower of the founder of the science of eugenics, Francis Galton, Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. During his time there, he began a series of...See more

Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944) was one of America's most prominent eugenicists and biologists. He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in Biology in 1892, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1912. A personal friend and devoted follower of the founder of the science of eugenics, Francis Galton, Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. During his time there, he began a series of investigations into aspects of the inheritance of human personality and mental traits, and over the years he generated hundreds of papers on the genetics of alcoholism, pellagra, criminality, feeblemindedness, bad temper, intelligence, manic depression, and the biological effects of race mixture. See less