The Groundwork of Eugenics

London: Dulau and Co., Ltd., 1912. Second edition.

PEARSON'S STATISTICAL APPROACH TO THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS, WRITTEN FOR THE GENERAL READER.

14 x 21.5 cm string-bound booklet with printed paper covered boards, 39 pp, 4 plates (2 double-page), 2-page list of Eugenics Laboratory Publications, 2-page list of Biometric Laboratory Publications. library card and pocket of the University of Texas at Austin (withdrawn) to front paste-down and front free endpaper, back paste-down. Corners worn, scattered marginal notations throughout, in custom archival mylar cover. A book that was checked out many times between 1922 and 1998! A good copy of a rare publication with a historic provenance reflecting its relevance to generations of readers. QUOTE ON TITLE PAGE: "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man.' I think I shall avoid the subject, as so surrounded with prejudices; though I fully admit it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." Letter of Darwin to Wallace 1857. PREFATORY NOTE: "This paper gives the substance of two lectures delivered as an introduction to a Course on the Science of National Eugenics at the Galton Laboratory, February 23 and March 2, 1909."

KARL PEARSON (1857-1936) graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1879, then studied physics at the University of Heidelberg and physiology at the University of Berlin. He then returned to mathematics, deputizing for the mathematics professor at King's College London in 1881 and for the professor at University College London in 1883. 1891 saw him also appointed to the professorship of Geometry at Gresham College; here he met Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, a zoologist who had some interesting problems requiring quantitative solutions. The collaboration, in biometry and evolutionary theory, was a fruitful one and lasted until Weldon died in 1906. Weldon introduced Pearson to Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who was interested in aspects of evolution such as heredity and eugenics. Pearson's work was all-embracing in the wide application and development of mathematical statistics, and encompassed the fields of biology, epidemiology, anthropometry, medicine, psychology, eugenics, and social history. A eugenicist who applied social Darwinism to entire nations, Pearson saw war against "inferior races" as a logical implication of the theory of evolution.