Like many scientists and social scientists of his era, Muller had been captivated by eugenics since the 1920s. As an undergraduate, he had formed a Biological Society at Columbia University to explore and support “positive eugenics.” But by the late twenties, as he had witnessed the menacing rise of eugenics in the United States, he had begun to reconsider his enthusiasm. The Eugenics Record Office, with its preoccupation with racial purification, and its drive to eliminate immigrants, “deviants,” and “defectives,” struck him as frankly sinister. Its prophets—Davenport, Priddy, and Bell—were
...more
