Eugenics Record Office

The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York was a center for eugenics and human heredity research in the first half of the twentieth century. Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H. Laughlin were major contributors to the field of eugenics in the United States (and in many ways, Germany).

Founded in 1910, the ERO was financed primarily by Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman) and then the Carnegie Institution until 1939. In 1944 it closed, and its records were transferred to the Charles Fremont Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota.

Its scientific advisory board contained a number of prominent scientists like Irving Fisher, William E. Castle, Adolf Meyer and Alexander Graham Bell.

The ERO advocated for laws that led to the forced sterilization of many Americans deemed "feebleminded".

References

• Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

External links

• Eugenics Archive - features many materials from the ERO archives.
• American Philosophical Society ERO index - index of ERO archives.
• Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, (New York / London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003);