Davenport, Charles Benedict

Charles Benedict Davenport, (born June 1, 1866, Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.—died February 18, 1944, Cold Spring Harbor, New York), American zoologist who contributed substantially to the study of eugenics (the improvement of populations through breeding) and heredity and who pioneered the use of statistical techniques in biological research.

After receiving a doctorate in zoology at Harvard University in 1892, Davenport taught there until 1899, when he left to join the faculty of the University of Chicago, where from 1901 to 1904 he was curator of the zoological museum. He directed the department of genetics (1904–34) for the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and founded and directed the Eugenics Record Office (1910–34).

While teaching experimental morphology at Harvard, Davenport used statistical methods in population studies. Partly as a result of breeding experiments with chickens and canaries, he was one of the first, soon after 1902, to recognize the validity of the newly discovered Mendelian theory of heredity. In Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), he compiled evidence concerning the inheritance of human traits, on the basis of which he argued that the application of genetic principles would improve the human race.

Davenport was editor of Genetics (from 1916) and the Journal of Physical Anthropology (from 1918). Davenport’s other important works included Statistical Methods with Special Reference to Biological Variation (1899), Eugenics (1910), and Body Build and Its Inheritance (1923). Davenport later cowrote, with American anthropologist Morris Steggerda, Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), a work widely viewed as racist for its misguided assumptions concerning the cultural impacts of breeding between black and white populations. Davenport’s views on racial purism were later deemed scientifically invalid. Moreover, his collaboration with and influence on eugenicists in Nazi Germany raised scientific, ethical, and moral concerns, overshadowing his legacy.