author
Roswell H. (Roswell Hill) Johnson
1877–1967
A scientist and teacher with a wide-ranging career, he wrote on heredity, marriage, and the oil industry while moving through some of the big academic debates of the early 20th century. His work is now remembered in part because it reflects the era's deeply controversial interest in eugenics.
1 Audiobook
Applied Eugenics
by Paul Popenoe, Roswell H. (Roswell Hill) Johnson
About the author
Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1877, Roswell Hill Johnson studied at Brown University, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin. He carried out research in biology, including work at the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution, and later taught at institutions including the University of Pittsburgh.
Johnson wrote across several fields rather than staying in just one lane. His books and papers include work on heredity and evolution, and library records also show later publications on oil and gas production as well as marriage.
Today, he is most often identified with early 20th-century eugenics, a movement that had serious harmful consequences and is widely discredited. That context matters when reading his work: it belongs to an important but troubling chapter in the history of science and social thought.