Major General Frederick Henry Osborn CBE was an American philanthropist, military leader, and eugenicist.
17 Facts About Frederick Osborn
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Frederick Osborn was a founder of several organizations and played a central part in reorienting eugenics in away from overt racism in the years leading up to World War II.
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Frederick Osborn graduated from Princeton University in 1910 and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, for a postgraduate year.
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Frederick Osborn's family had made their fortune in the railroad business, and he went into the family business up until the outbreak of World War I, when he served in the American Red Cross in France as Commander of the Advance Zone for the last 11 months of the war.
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Frederick Osborn was one of the founding members of the American Eugenics Society in 1926 and joined the British Eugenics Society in 1928, serving as its Secretary in 1931.
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Frederick Osborn was instrumental in the founding of the Population Association of America in 1931.
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Frederick Osborn played a central role in the 1936 founding of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, a leading demographic research and training center.
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Frederick Osborn was one of the founding trustees of the Pioneer Fund in 1937, a charitable foundation charged with promoting eugenics.
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Frederick Osborn suspected that environment played a greater role than genetics in the shaping of human beings, and thought eugenics should take place within groups rather than between them.
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An admirer of the reforms instituted in 1930s Sweden through the efforts of economist Gunnar Myrdal and his wife Alva Myrdal, Frederick Osborn emphasized the eugenic potential of extended state support in childcare, recreation, housing, nursery services, and education as a means of stimulating fertility among desirable populations.
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Frederick Osborn argued that the aim of eugenics should be to ensure that every child was wanted.
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Frederick Osborn believed that in this system, which he called the "true freedom of parenthood," the parents most capable of rearing children would be likelier to have more.
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Frederick Osborn encouraged and endorsed programs in Nazi Germany that sterilized Jews, Poles, and others deemed "unsuitable" to breed.
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In 1940, Frederick Osborn was selected by Franklin Roosevelt to chair the Civilian Advisory Committee on Selective Service.
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Frederick Osborn served at Princeton, as a charter trustee from 1943 to 1955, and as a member of several advisory boards, including the Curriculum Committee and Psychology Department Council.
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Frederick Osborn was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1948.
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In 1954, Frederick Osborn played a central role in the founding of the journal Eugenics Quarterly, published by Duke University, which changed its name in 1968 to Social Biology.