Davenport, Charles Benedict (1866–1944)

US biologist. He made valuable contributions to the study of heredity in humans and animals, and collaborated with A G Love in exhaustive inquiries into the physical fitness of men drafted for World War I.

He was instructor of zoology at Harvard University 1893–99, subsequently becoming assistant professor of zoology at Chicago University. From 1898 to 1921 he was director of the Marine Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute, and in 1904, he founded, and became director of, the station for experimental evolution of the Carnegie Institution.

His publications include Experimental Morphology (1897–99), Eugenics (1910), Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), Heredity of Skin Color in Negro–White Crosses (1913), The Feebly Inhibited Nomadism and Temperament (1915), Naval Officers, Their Development and Heredity (1919), and Body Build and its Inheritance (1923).