Research report 2009 - Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Research in Human Biological Diversity in the 20th Century

Authors
Lipphardt, Veronika
Departments
Summary
How can human variation, “human biological diversity”, be described and researched adequately? During the first half of the twentieth century, this question was for the most part answered by reference to race biology. After 1945, however, when racial thinking was thoroughly discredited, only population and molecular genetics seemed to offer life scientists new approaches to this especially thorny question. In fact, the various attempts to expound the problems of this subject were more complex and diverse than the current historiography acknowledges.

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