Charles Davenport

Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866–February 18, 1944) was a prominent American eugenicist and biologist. He was one of the leaders of the American eugenics movement, which was directly involved in the sterilization of around 60,000 "unfit" Americans and strongly influenced the Holocaust in Europe. Davenport was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Amzi Benedict Davenport, an abolitionist of puritan stock, and his wife Jane Joralemon Dimon (of English, Dutch and Italian ancestry). He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in biology in 1892 and married Gertrude Crotty, a zoology graduate, in 1894. Later on, Davenport became a professor of zoology at Harvard. He became one of the most prominent American biologists of his time,...