Human Betterment Foundation
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[[Image:Human Sterilization Today.jpg|right|thumb|1938 HBF pamphlet titled "Human Sterilization Today".]]
The '''Human Betterment Foundation''' (HBF) was an [[USA|American]] [[eugenics]] organization established in [[Pasadena, California]] in [[1928]] by [[E.S. Gosney]] with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and [[education]]al forces for the protection and betterment of the [[human]] [[family]] in [[body]], [[mind]], [[moral character|character]], and [[citizenship]]". It primarily served to compile and distribute information about [[compulsory sterilization]] legislation in the [[United States]], for the purposes of eugenics.
The initial board of trustees were Gosney, [[Henry M. Robinson]] (a Los Angeles banker), [[George Dock]] (a Pasadena physician), [[David Starr Jordan]] (chancellor of [[Stanford University]]), [[Charles Goethe]] (a Sacramento philanthropist), [[Justin Miller]] (dean of the college of law at the [[University of Southern California]]), [[Otis Castle]] (a Los Angeles attorney), [[Joe G. Crick]] (a Pasadena horticulturist), and biologist/eugenicist [[Paul Popenoe]]. Later members included [[Lewis Terman]] (a Stanford psychologist best known for creating the [[Stanford-Binet test]] of [[IQ]]), [[William B. Munro]] (a [[Harvard]] professor of political science), and [[University of California, Berkeley]] professors [[Herbert M. Evans]] (anatomy) and [[Samuel J. Holmes]] (zoology).
After Gosney's death in [[1942]], Gosney's daughter Lois Castle and the HBF's board liquidated HBF with its funds going to form the Gosney research fund at the [[California Institute of Technology]] (Caltech) in [[1943]]. The archives of the Human Betterment Foundation are in Special Collections at Caltech in Pasadena.
==See also==
*[[American Eugenics Society]]
*[[British Eugenics Society]]
==References==
* "The Human Betterment Foundation," editorial reprinted from ''Eugenics'', Vol. 3, No. 3: 110-113, in ''Collected papers on eugenic sterilization in California'' (Pasadena: Human Betterment Foundation, 1930).
* E.S. Gosney and Paul B. Popenoe, ''Sterilization for human betterment: A summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929'' (New York: Macmillan, 1929).
==External links==
* [http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mendel/1996.htm#Valone Information about Gosney and the HBF papers collection in CalTech]
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[[Category:Eugenics]]
[[Category:Pasadena, California]]
[[Category:Organizations established in 1928]]
[[Category:1943 disestablishments]]
[[de:Human Betterment Foundation]]