As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century.

Ward's 1913 article " Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics " and Chesterton's 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils were harshly critical of the rapidly growing eugenics movement.

Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of birth control and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement.

In the early 20th century, many anthropologists accepted and taught the belief that biologically distinct races were isomorphic with distinct linguistic, cultural, and social groups, while popularly applying that belief to the field of eugenics, in conjunction with a practice that is now called scientific racism. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was co-opted by the budding eugenics movement to justify systematic population and racial planning in the early 20th century.

Many organizations and journals that had their origins in the eugenics movement began to distance themselves from the philosophy, as when Eugenics Quarterly became Social Biology in 1969.

Due to the eugenics movement in Europe and the United States, the colonial government became concerned with the differences between Hutu and Tutsi.

Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race.

He was, nevertheless, a leading figure in the eugenics movement ( see, for example, Eugenics manifesto ).

This organization, founded by Procter & Gamble heir Clarence Gamble provided experts, written material and monetary support to the eugenics movement.

Muller was critical of the new directions of the eugenics movement ( such as anti-immigration ), but was hopeful about the prospects for positive eugenics.

Meanwhile, the waning of the eugenics movement, ironically hastened by his own work pointing to the previously ignored connections between environment and genetics, meant that his ideas on the future of human evolution had reduced impact in the public sphere.

It claimed that Spencer had used evolution to justify economic and social inequality, and to support a political stance of extreme conservatism, which led, amongst other things, to the eugenics movement.

The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inspired by Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races ( 1853 – 1855 ) and Vacher de Lapouge's " anthroposociology ", asserted as self-evident the biological inferiority of particular groups ( Kevles 1985 ).

In 1906, together with Irving Fisher and Charles Davenport, Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation, which became a major center of the new eugenics movement in America.

As a follower of the eugenics movement and, by modern day standards, a white supremacist, Plecker falsely surmised that there were no true Virginia Indians remaining as years of intermarriage has diluted the race.

Correia concludes that Singularitarianism and the broader transhumanist movement are old-fashioned eugenics with better techniques passing itself off as pragmatic postmodernism.

The prospect of a " designer baby " is closely related to the PGD technique, creating a fear that increasing frequency of genetic screening will move toward a modern eugenics movement.

The organization has been controversial, with some comparing it to the eugenics movement.

Francis Galton began work in 1869 to find a statistical science of heredity which could encourage voluntary care in selecting partners, and in 1883 introduced the term " eugenics " for this subject, but in the early 20th century a eugenics movement adopted ideas of Mendelian genetics and promoted negative eugenics to prevent those thought to be unsuitable from having children, and eugenics was misused to legitimise policies of racial hygene.

Furthermore, most of the over 64, 000 sterilizations performed in the USA under the aegis of eugenics legislation were not in prison institutions or performed on convicted criminals ; punitive sterilizations made up only negligible amounts of the total operations performed, as most states and prison officials were nervous about their legal status ( which were not affirmed in Buck v. Bell specifically ) as possible violations of the Eighth (" cruel and unusual punishment ") or Fourteenth Amendments (" Due Process " and " Equal Protection Clauses ").

The USA creationist explanation for the Holocaust is that it had been driven in part by eugenics, or the principle that individuals with " undesirable " genetic characteristics should be removed from the gene pool.

This country's approach to genetics and eugenics was focused on Eugen Fischer's concept of phenogenetics and the Nazi twin study methods of Fischer and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer.

The practice of negative racial aspects of eugenics, after World War II, fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Adolf Hitler promised to purge Germany of non-Aryan influences on society and to create a pure Aryan race through eugenics.

Englishman Francis Galton coined the terms psychometrics and eugenics, and developed a method for measuring intelligence based on nonverbal sensory-motor tests.

Jackson ( 2000 ) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s.

Arising from the dominant discourse of the Jewish suffering during the years of Nazi domination, and building on the divergence of differential victimhoods brought to light by studies of the Roma and the mentally ill, who suffered massively under the eugenics programs of the Third Reich, the idea of a “ Gay Holocaust ” was first explored in the early 1970s.

The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society.

Anna, writing " Dane Kempton's " letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while London, writing " Herbert Wace's " letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics.

Proponents of eugenics, based on biological determinism, wanted to improve the human species through compulsory sterilization of criminals, the mentally retarded, and others deemed social misfits.

The Houyhnhnm society is based upon reason, and only upon reason, and therefore the horses practice eugenics based on their analyses of benefit and cost.

As time went on, however, Yerkes began to propagate his support for eugenics in the 1910s and 20s.

He is also the founder of " Cosmotheism ", a religion based on white separatism, white nationalism, racialism, panentheism, eugenics, and National Socialism.

Pierce described his form of panentheism as being based on " he idea of an evolutionary universe ... with an evolution toward ever higher and higher states of self-consciousness ," and his political ideas were centered on racial purity and eugenics as the means of advancing the white race first towards a superhuman super race, and then towards a personal godhood.

" Virginia State Epileptic Colony ," a song by the Manic Street Preachers on their 2009 album ' Journal For Plague Lovers ,' addresses the state's program of eugenics.

Aldous Huxley ’ s best-selling novel Brave New World, about a future society based on eugenics, was published in 1932.

Human “ dog and pony show ” type events ( organized by advocates of eugenics ), where men and women appeared on stage in swimsuits in eugenic competitions ( only Nordic Aryans were allowed to enter ) to be evaluated for their physical and mental qualities as marriage partners were common throughout Europe and North America in the 1920s.

The Nazis took this concept to the limit by establishing a program to systematically genetically enhance the Nordic Aryans themselves through a program of Nazi eugenics, based on the eugenics laws of the United States state of California, to create a super race.

Galton influenced Burt whose work on standardization of psychological tests led to the introduction of IQ testing, bringing Burt into contact with eugenics.

Over time, the scope of the Board's work broadened from a focus on pure eugenics to considering sterilization as a tool to combat poverty and welfare costs.

For the Fabian Society he wrote on poverty in London, the eight-hour day, land nationalisation the nature of socialism, education, eugenics and reform of the House of Lords.