Eugenics & Statistics

2019-08-05

politics book history

There were lots of interesting and terrible things in Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini but here’s something that stood out. Eugenics was a widely respected field of study around the time of the turn of the 20th century, well before the rash of state-sponsored genocide programs we now associate with Nazis etc. University College London established a Eugenics Record Office, that aimed to study races of man and conct the best ways to hone the (presumably white) superior race to perfection. Of the many people who were both active in the field then, and still respected now: Karl Pearson, inventor of the field of statistics but also the first Professor of National Eugenics at the UCL unit.