Henry Herbert Goddard

Born in 1866, Henry Herbert Goddard was an American psychologist whose career became closely associated with the study and testing of intelligence. He worked at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey and is often remembered for translating and promoting the Binet-Simon scale in the United States, which helped spread early intelligence testing in schools and institutions.

He also wrote The Kallikak Family in 1912, a book that argued for hereditary explanations of what he called "feeble-mindedness." That work was highly influential in its time, but it later came to be widely criticized for weak methods, bias, and its role in supporting eugenic thinking and segregation.

Today, Goddard is remembered less as a straightforward pioneer than as a cautionary figure in the history of psychology. His career shows how scientific ideas can shape public life in powerful ways, especially when they are used to justify unequal treatment.